Professor's new book examines crimes related to a country's valuable commodities

LEMONT FURNACE, Pa.—Donald R. Liddick Jr., associate professor of administration of justice at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus, has published his eighth book, "Transnational Organized Crime and Natural Resources Trafficking: Funding Conflict and Stealing from the World’s Most Vulnerable Citizens" (Lexington Books, January 2020).

“Donald Liddick contributes an exciting study into networks of serious crime and interfaces between legal and illegal actors that cross borders,” said Nikos Passas, professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University. “The book offers case studies of illicit commerce in several commodities, transnational organized crime, corruption, and white-collar crime within the framework of green criminology linked to analyses of international trade, finance, conflict, and geopolitics.”

According to Lexington Books, “Each chapter examines a different commodity or set of commodities that have become the province of transnational organized crime networks: diamonds, ivory, rhino horn, timber, lapis lazuli, jade, rare minerals, gold, and oil. The book provides coverage of all the players involved, from high-ranking government officials to insurgent groups and terrorists. The work also enumerates the array of human rights abuses associated with the traffic in conflict commodities.”

Liddick earned his doctorate from Penn State in 1995. He has since served as an assistant professor and associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg and Penn State Fayette. Liddick has published extensively on the topic of organized crime. His first textbook, "Organized Crime: The Essentials," was published in 2018 by Cognella Academic Publishing.

The text is 228 pages and is now available for order in hardback and e-book formats at Rowman.com/Lexington.