| Globalization, which has appeared as advances in transportation, information and telecommunication technologies particularly in the twentieth century, has facilitated international legal activities as well as illegal activities, namely transnational crimes. There were some examples of transnational crimes before the 20th century; however, the intensity and diversity of those crimes has drastically increased in modern times. With the advent of transnational crimes, which can be categorized under the banner of smuggling, national and international organizations, institutions began to emerge, too. The prominent examples of these organizations fighting against these crimes are customs, police, coastal guard, armed forces, etc. The main conclusion of this paper is that customs administrations are more effective in preventing some types of these crimes like all kinds of commercial smuggling while they are relatively less effective in preventing some other types such as drug, human, and arms trafficking. There are many reasons why customs administrations have been successful in combatting smuggling of legal commodities and why they have been less successful in combatting smuggling of illegal commodities. |
