The third edition of the Index includes data on criminality and resilience against organized crime for all 193 UN member states.
It demonstrates how organized crime and resilience have evolved over the last four years since the first Index was released.
To improve accessibility, the Global Initiative will release the 2025 Global Organized Crime Index in digital and PDF formats, like the 2023 report. The interactive, web-based format makes data easier to access and enhances the user experience.
This enhancement also empowers journalists, policymakers, scholars, and all our users to interact with, draw from, and share this information more effectively.
Press release
GAP BETWEEN CRIMINALITY AND RESILIENCE IS WIDENING, SAYS 2025 GLOBAL ORGANIZED CRIME INDEX
Resilience is plateauing amid the growth of non-violent crime and a drug market duopoly. But evidence shows that resilience can have a measurable impact on criminality.
Drawing on five years of accumulated data, the Index shows that organized crime has reached a crossroads.
Long-standing trends can still be seen, including the persistence and spread of markets such as drug trafficking, human exploitation and financial crime, but they are becoming more nuanced, and are intersecting with macro-level transformations in geopolitics, technology, environmental stress and conflict.
These convergences are not only reinforcing existing dynamics, but also generating new forms of criminality that are more adaptive, networked and difficult to counter.
The findings are stark. For example, the scores for financial and cyber-dependent crimes have surged since the 2023 edition. These have been propelled by digital transformation, particularly the growing adoption of artificial intelligence. Foreign actors and private sector actors are becoming more prominent, reflecting the growing interconnectedness across borders, and between licit and illicit supply chains. Drug markets, too, are changing: synthetic drugs and cocaine are in ascendancy, while cannabis and heroin are losing ground. These developments are not isolated: they are manifestations of how bigger global trends are reshaping the criminal landscape, expanding its reach and deepening its complexity. And traditional responses to transnational crime are being challenged.
What emerges from the analysis of the 2025 Index results is that it is not only levels of criminality that matter, but the shifts themselves – how markets evolve, how actors adapt and how resilience measures change in response. These inflection points are likely to have the greatest influence on how organized crime manifests in the years to come. Building on the past iterations of data, this edition also seeks to demonstrate how future trends in criminality might develop.
CRIME AT A CROSSROADS
The 2025 Global OC Index highlights five major shifts in the criminal landscape during this pivotal moment of global change, characterized by geopolitical rivalry, technological advancements, conflict, and a decline in democracy. It also presents a statistical model of the paths of organized crime and resilience.
- Drug markets are shifting to a duopoly.
Cocaine and synthetic drugs have significantly expanded since the first Index edition, rising by +0.37 and +0.52. Cannabis remains the most widespread drug but is declining amid more permissive laws, while heroin has dropped sharply, though it persists in some regions. - ‘Invisible’, generally non-violent, crimes are rising.
Financial crimes are the world’s most pervasive market and have seen the sharpest rise since the last edition (6.21; +0.24). Cyber-dependent crimes, though less widespread, have also expanded (4.55 → 4.65). Both markets show weak correlation with resilience, revealing that existing measures are ill-equipped to address them. - Counterfeiting is growing and systemically connected.
Although often overlooked, counterfeiting is rising globally (4.98 → 5.09), driven by technology, social media, and economic pressures. It shows the strongest correlation with other criminal markets (0.84), highlighting overlapping networks, routes, and financial flows. - Criminal actors are adapting.
State-embedded actors remain the most influential globally, but foreign and private-sector actors are gaining ground. Foreign actors saw the sharpest rise since 2021 (+0.40 to 5.68), while private-sector actors, including financial intermediaries, also increased notably since 2023 (+0.13 to 4.89). - Resilience is plateauing.
Resilience continues to lag behind evolving organized crime threats. Institutional measures are weakening: ‘international cooperation’ rose only slightly since 2023 (+0.03 to 5.90) amid a fractured multilateral system, while ‘judicial system & detention’ saw the steepest decline (−0.12). - Evidence shows that resilience has a measurable impact on criminality.
For the first time, the 2025 Index introduces a forecasting component that projects criminality trends over the next five years. It builds on previous editions and uses continuous data collection to support deeper, long-term analysis. To this end, the Index vulnerability matrix, which measures how criminality and resilience interact across all countries covered by the tool, served as the starting point. Following a statistical analysis and using state-embedded actors as a proxy for criminality, the 2025 Index finds that a 1.0-point increase in resilience corresponds to a 1.8-point reduction in the presence of state-embedded actors, underscoring that strengthening resilience can measurably reduce the ability of these actors to manipulate state institutions for illicit gains.
10 NOVEMBER 2025
The launch of the third edition of the Global Organized Crime Index is rapidly approaching! Be sure to reserve your spot for the launch event.
We are actively working on this year’s edition, which is now scheduled for release in November, aligning with the International Day for the Prevention of and Fight against All Forms of Transnational Organized Crime.
“We now have five years of data that enables us to measure trends. This information shows us that organized crime is not only expanding, it is reorganizing”
“Resilience is not keeping pace with criminality. Despite this, the Index data shows us where concrete steps can be taken to close this dangerous and widening gap”.
The Index provides insight into how criminality responds and adapts to its environment, and importantly, where responses have been successful and where they have fallen short.
We encourage all those interested in reducing the harm caused by organized crime to use the evidence presented in the new edition of the Global Organized Crime Index as a tool to effect change.
For media inquiries, interviews, or further information, please contact: newsroom@globalinitiative.net
If you have any questions about our tool and report or would like to discuss a specific topic, please don't hesitate to request a meeting with the Index team by emailing ocindex@globalinitiative.net.
We would be happy to meet you and provide more information about our methodology and key findings.
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