Publications
Research Outputs
My publications are listed on this page. If you don’t have access to any item listed here, and would like a copy, please contact me.
Key: (*) = undergraduate student co-author; (+) = graduate student co-author; (%) early career academic co-author.
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Book | Gangs, Drugs, and Illicit Markets | Cybercrime | Methods and Ethics | Collaborations and Other Work | Public Outputs
Gangs, Drugs, and Illicit Markets
An Exploration of Illicit Enterprise
My doctoral work focused on illicit enterprises that trade in illicit drugs. I focused on the Paso del Norte metropolitan area, comprised of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua and El Paso, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; and, Chicago, Illinois. My book and the publications below discuss the everyday life of the drug trade, issues related to criminal protection markets, prison gangs, and illicit enterprise.
Azizi, Hamid (+), and R.V. Gundur. 2025. The Taliban’s Drug Trade Revenue and Taxation System: What the Experts Know. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism. doi: 10.1080/1057610X.2025.2502924.
Berry, Mark (%), Mike Salinas, and R.V. Gundur. 2023. Financial Risk Management Strategies of Small to Medium Illicit Drug Enterprises: Considering Low-level Money Laundering. Trends in Organized Crime. doi: 10.1007/s12117-023-09501-5.
earlier draft: Berry, Mark (%), and R.V. Gundur. 2021. Financial Risk Management Strategies of Small to Medium Illicit Enterprises Second International Research Conference on Empirical Approaches to AML and Financial Crime Suppression, Nassau, The Bahamas. doi: 10.21428/cb6ab371.a67fc4f3 [Open Access Pre-print].
Giommoni, Luca, R. V. Gundur and Eric Cheekes (*). 2020. International drug trafficking: past, present, and prospective trends. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.470.
Giommoni, Luca and R. V. Gundur. 2018. An analysis of the United Kingdom’s cannabis market using crowdsourced data. Global Crime, 19(2). doi: 10.1080/17440572.2018.1460071.
Gundur, R. V. 2020. Finding the Sweet Spot: Optimizing criminal careers within the context of illicit enterprise. Deviant Behavior, 41(3), 378-397. doi: 10.1080/01639625.2019.1565851.
Gundur, R. V. 2020. Negotiating Violence and Protection in Prison and on the Outside: The organizational evolution of the transnational prison gang Barrio Azteca. International Criminal Justice Review, 30(1), 30-60. doi: 10.1177/1057567719836466.
Gundur, R. V. 2020. Prison Gangs. In H. N. Ponell (Ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.397.
Gundur, R. V. 2019. Settings Matter: Examining protection’s influence on the illicit drug trade in convergence settings in the Paso del Norte metropolitan area. Crime, Law and Social Change, 72, 229-360. doi: 10.1007/s10611-019-09810-3.
Gundur, R. V. 2018. The Changing Social Organization of Prison Protection Markets: When prisoners choose to organize horizontally rather than vertically. Trends in Organized Crime. doi: 10.1007/s12117-018-9332-0 [Open Access].
Gundur, R. V., and Rebecca Trammell 2022. When prison gangs become organized crime: Studying protection arrangements and their consequences. Trends in Organized Crime. doi: 10.1007/s12117-022-09469-8.
Levi, Michael, Rajeev Gundur, Martin Innes, and Peter Reuter. 2014. “Impact économique, financier et social du crime organisé dans l’Union européenne.” Sécurité et Stratégie. 16. doi: 10.3917/sestr.016.0084.
Purvis, W. Ernest (+), R V. Gundur. 2019. The drug trade at a glance. In Research Handbook on Transnational Crime, edited by Valsamis Mitsilegas, Saskia Hufnagel and Anton Moiseienko. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. doi: 10.4337/9781784719449.
Shaw, April (%), and R. V. Gundur. 2026. “‘Addiction Never Seems to Be Historic’: How Older Women in Recovery from Illicit Drug Use Experience Stigma Within Their Practitioner-Patient Communications.” Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy. doi: 10.1080/09687637.2026.2647881.
Cybercrime
A Crime Type That’s Increasing
I study illicit enterprise in the context of cybercrime and have a specific interest in fraud and financial crime, and how criminal actors leverage emerging and disruptive technologies to commit crime. I am currently working on papers on financial aspects of cybercrime. For a video snapshot of this research [Click Here].
Burton, Lisa (*) and R. V. Gundur. 2026. Protecting Users Against Fraud: An Evaluation of Anti-Fraud Messaging and Trust Mechanisms Within Consumer-to-Consumer Online Marketplaces in the Context of the UK’s Online Fraud Charter 2023. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research. doi: 10.1007/s10610-025-09651-y
Cole, Tessa (%) and R. V. Gundur. 2024. Virtual Currency, Cryptoassets, and Cybercrime. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice, edited by Henry N Pontell. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.782
Gundur, R. V., Volkan Topalli, Zarina Vakhitova, Harry Kangluo Liu (+), Michael Levi, Charlie Winter (+), and Alexandra Louise Anderson Baxter (+). 2026. The Commercialization of Ransomware: From Spray-and-Prey to Big Game Hunting to the Ransom Bazaar. Crime & Delinquency. 10.1177/00111287261440146
Levi, Michael, Alan Doig, R. V. Gundur, David Wall, and Matthew Williams. 2017. Cyberfraud and the implications for effective risk-based responses: Themes from UK research. Crime, Law and Social Change, 67(1), 77-96. doi: 10.1007/s10611-016-9648-0
Taodang, Dean (*) and R.V. Gundur (2022). How Frauds in Times of Crisis Target People. Victims & Offenders. doi: 10.1080/
Williams, Matthew, Michael Levi, Pete Burnap and R. V. Gundur. 2019. Under the Corporate Radar: Examining Insider Business Cybercrime Victimization through an Application of Routine Activities Theory. Deviant Behavior, 40(9), 1119-1131. doi: 10.1080/01639625.2018.1461786 [Open Access]
Methods and Ethics
Aqil, Nauman (%), Katharine Petrich (%), and R. V. Gundur. 2023. Leveraging Identity to Overcome Temporal and Financial Limitations in Rapid Ethnography in Criminological Research. The Journal of Criminology. 56(2–3), 170–193. doi: 10.1177/26338076231172521. [Author Accepted Manuscript]
Azizi, Hamid (+), and R. V. Gundur. 2025. Collecting data in forbidden places: reflections on gaining access, mitigating risks, and managing fieldworkers in geopolitically sensitive and precarious situations. International Journal of Qualitative Methods. doi: 10.1177/16094069251345502.
Gundur, R. V. 2019. Using the Internet to Recruit Respondents for Offline Interviews in Criminological Studies. Urban Affairs Review, 55(6), 1731 –1756. doi: 10.1177/1078087417740430.
Gundur, R. V., Mark Berry (%), and Dean Taodang (*) 2021. Using digital open source and crowdsourced data in studies of deviance and crime. In A. Lavorgna & T. Holt (Eds.) Researching Cybercrimes: Methodologies, Ethics, and Critical Approaches. Palgrave. doi: 10.4337/9781784719449.00027.
Winter, Charlie (*), and R. V. Gundur. R. V. 2022. Challenges in Gaining Ethical Approval for Sensitive Digital Social Science Studies. International Journal of Social Research Methodology. doi: 10.1080/13645579.2022.2122226. [Author Accepted Manuscript]
Collabs | et cetera
Collaborations and other work outside of my main research themes
Badman, Haylie (+), Derek Dalton, and R V. Gundur. 2021. Popular Representations of Crime. In Crime and Justice: A Guide to Criminology (6th ed.), edited by Derek Dalton, Willem de Lint and Darren Palmer: Thompson Reuters.
Gundur, R. V. and Daniel R. Kavish (%). 2022. Captives in Society: The Role of Race in the Carceral Cycle. In B. Crewe, A. Goldsmith, and M. Halsey (Eds.) Power and Pain in the Modern Prison: The Society of Captives Revisited. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.21428/cb6ab371.78076c2f.
Hosford, Kara (+), Nauman Aqil (%), James Windle, R. V. Gundur, and Felia Allum. 2021. “Who researches organised crime? A review of organised crime authorship (2004—2019). Trends in Organized Crime. doi: 10.1007/s12117-021-09437-8.
Public Criminology
Government and Industry Reports, Opinion Pieces, and Book Reviews
Reports
Gundur, R. V., Michael Levi, Volkan Topalli, Marie Ouellet, Maria Stolyarova (%), Lennon Y.-C Chang, and Diego Domínguez Mejía (%) 2021. Evaluating Criminal Transactional Methods in Cyberspace as Understood in an International Context. CrimRxiv. [Executive Summary, Open Access] | [Full Report, Open Access]
Levi, Michael, Alan Doig, R. V. Gundur, David Wall, and Matthew L. Williams. 2015. The Implications of Economic Cybercrime for Policing. London: City of London Corporation. [Open Access].
Levi, Michael, Martin Innes, Peter Reuter, and R. V. Gundur. 2013. The Economic, Financial & Social Impacts of Organised Crime in the European Union. Brussels: EU Publications Office. [Open Access].
UNODC. [Robert Muggah and Rajeev Vishwanath Gundur]. (2024). Caribbean Gangs: Drugs, firearms, and gangs networks in Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago. Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. [Open Access].
Opinion Pieces
Muggah, Robert and Rajeev Gundur. (2024). Perspective: The Caribbean’s metastasizing gang threat needs coordinated regional responses. Small Wars Journal.
Berry, Mark and R. V. Gundur. (2025). Money laundering plays a key role in every part of the illegal drugs industry – here’s how it works. The Conversation.
Book Reviews
Gundur, R. V. (2013). The New Public Security Model for Mexico. Policing and Society, 24(2), 263-264. doi: 10.1080/10439463.2013.844132.
Gundur, R. V. (2015). Counterfeit Crime: Criminal Profits, Terror Dollars, and Nonsense (R.T. Naylor). Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books, September.
Gundur, R. V. (2020). Transnational Organized Crime in Latin America and the Caribbean (R. Evan Ellis). International Criminal Justice Review. doi: 10.1177/1057567720908044.
Gundur, R. V. (2022). Crime Dot Com: From Viruses to Vote Rigging, How Hacking Went Global (Geoff White). Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books, March.
Gundur, R. V. (2022). Syndicate Women: Gender and Networks in Chicago Organized Crime (Chris Smith). Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books, June.
Gundur, R. V. (2023). The Informal Regulation of Criminal Markets in Latin America (Hernán Flom). International Criminal Justice Review. doi: 10.1177/10575677231199060
Gundur, R. V. (2023). The Slow Violence of Immigration Court: Procedural Justice on Trial (Maya Pagni Barak). Theoretical Criminology. doi: 10.1177/13624806231196691
Gundur, R. V. (2023). Out of the Red: My Life of Gangs, Prison, and Redemption (Christian Bolden). Critical Criminology. doi: 10.1007/s10612-023-09725-5
Gundur, R. V. (2023). Intimate Crimes: Kidnapping, Gangs, and Trust in Mexico City (Rolando Ochoa). Journal of Illicit Economies and Development. https://jied.lse.ac.uk/articles/10.31389/jied.187