ABSTRACT
The impact of serious and organized crime in Asia varies from the extremes of state and organized crime symbiosis to the role of small-scale street gangs: not surprising given that Asia is an area even more diverse than Europe. This difference challenges Western criminological definitions of organized crime but it is apparent that similar drivers and problems arise in the protection and regulation of illicit markets (Scheptyki 2008). In both East and West, networks of organized criminals prevail; however, the structure and morphology of these criminal networks vary due to culture as well as function (Ganapathy and Broadhurst 2008).
