Smuggling is the illegal transportation of objects, substances, information or people, such as out of a house or buildings, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations. More broadly, social scientists define smuggling as the purposeful movement across a border in contravention to the relevant legal frameworks.
There are various motivations to smuggle. These include the participation in illegal trade, such as in the drug trade/drug cartel, illegal weapons trade, human trafficking, wildlife smuggling or wildlife trade, counterfeiting, game of chance, prostitution, kidnapping, heists, copyright infringement (piracy), chop shops, illegal immigration or illegal emigration, tax evasion, import restrictions, export restrictions, providing contraband to prison inmates, or the theft of the items being smuggled.
Smuggling is a common theme in literature, from Bizet's opera Carmen to the James Bond spy books (and later films) Diamonds Are Forever and Goldfinger.
Etymology The verb smuggle, from Low German smuggeln or Dutch smokkelen ("to transport (goods) illegally"), apparently a frequentative formation of a word meaning "to sneak", most likely entered the English language during the 1600s–1700s.
History Smuggling has a long and controversial history, probably dating back to the first time at which duties were imposed in any form, or any attempt was made to prohibit a form of traffic. Smuggling is often associated with efforts by authorities to prevent the importation of certain contraband items or non-taxed goods; however, there has also been smuggling based on illegally exporting goods. In England smuggling first became a recognised problem in the 13th century, following the creation of a national customs collection system by Edward I in 1275.N. S. B. Gras, The Early English Customs System (OUP, 1918) Medieval smuggling tended to focus on the export of highly taxed export goods — notably wool and hides.N.J. Williams, Contraband Cargoes: Seven Centuries of Smuggling (London, 1959) Merchants also, however, sometimes smuggled other goods to circumvent prohibitions or embargoes on particular trades. Grain, for instance, was usually prohibited from export, unless prices were low, because of fears that grain exports would raise the price of food in England and thus cause food shortages and civil unrest. Following the loss of Gascony to the French in 1453, imports of wine were also sometimes embargoed during wars to try to deprive the French of the revenues that could be earned from their main export.
Most studies of historical smuggling have been based on official sources — such as court records, or the letters of Revenue Officers. A senior academic of the University of Bristol states that they only detail the activities of those dumb enough to get caught. Dr Evan Jones This has led him and others, such as Prof. H. V. Bowen of the University of Swansea to use commercial records to reconstruct smuggling businesses.Huw V. Bowen, ‘Privilege and Profit: Commanders of East Indiamen as Private Traders, Entrepreneurs and Smugglers, 1760–1813’, International Journal of Maritime History, 19/2 (2007), pp. 43–88. Jones' study focuses on smuggling in Bristol in the mid-16th century, arguing that the illicit export of goods like grain and leather represented a significant part of the city's business, with many members of the civic elite engaging in it, whether by disguised/hidden transport or mis-description of goods.E. T. Jones, 'Illicit business: accounting for smuggling in mid-sixteenth century Bristol', Economic History Review, 54 (2001); E. T. Jones, Inside the Illicit Economy: Reconstructing the Smugglers' Trade of Sixteenth Century Bristol (Ashgate, June 2012) Grain smuggling by members of the civic elite, often working closely with corrupt customs officers, has also been shown to have been prevalent in East Anglia during the later 16th century.N. J. Williams, ‘Francis Shaxton and the Elizabethan port books’, English Historical Review 66 (1951)
In England wool was smuggled to the continent in the 17th century, under the pressure of high excise taxes. In 1724 Daniel Defoe wrote of Lymington, Hampshire, on the south coast of England
I do not find they have any foreign commerce, except it be what we call smuggling and roguing; which I may say, is the reigning commerce of all this part of the English coast, from the mouth of the Thames to the Land's End in Cornwall.
The high rates of duty levied on tea and also wine and spirits, and other luxury goods coming in from mainland Europe at this time made the clandestine import of such goods and the evasion of the duty a highly profitable venture for impoverished fishermen and seafarers. In certain parts of the country such as the Romney Marsh, East Kent, Cornwall and East Cleveland, the smuggling industry was for many communities more economically significant than legal activities such as farming and fishing. The principal reason for the high duty was the need for the government to finance a number of extremely expensive wars with France and the United States.
Before the era of drug smuggling and human trafficking, smuggling had acquired a kind of nostalgic romanticism, in the vein of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped:
Few places on the British coast did not claim to be the haunts of wreckers or mooncussers.The darkness of a moonless night aided furtive movement. The thievery was boasted about and romanticized until it seemed a kind of heroism. It did not have any taint of criminality and the whole of the south coast had pockets vying with one another over whose smugglers were the darkest or most daring. The Smugglers Inn was one of the commonest names for a bar on the coast.Paul Theroux, The Kingdom by the Sea, 1983:84.
In North America, smuggling in colonial times was a reaction to the heavy taxes and regulations imposed by mercantilist trade policies. After American independence in 1783, smuggling developed at the edges of the United States at places like Passamaquoddy Bay, St. Mary's in Georgia, Lake Champlain, and Louisiana. During Thomas Jefferson's embargo of 1807–1809, these same places became the primary places where goods were smuggled out of the nation in defiance of the law. Like Britain, a gradual liberalization of trade laws as part of the free trade movement meant less smuggling. in 1907 President Theodore Roosevelt tried to cut down on smuggling by establishing the Roosevelt Reservation along the United States–Mexico Border. Smuggling revived in the 1920s during Prohibition, and drug smuggling became a major problem after 1970. In the 1990s, when economic sanctions were imposed on Serbia, a large percent of the population lived off smuggling petrol and consumer goods from neighboring countries. The state unofficially allowed this to continue or otherwise the entire economy would have collapsed.
In modern times, as many first-world countries have struggled to contain a rising influx of immigrants, the smuggling of people across national borders has become a lucrative extra-legal activity, as well as the extremely dark side, people-trafficking, especially of women who may be enslaved typically as prostitutes.
Types of smuggling Goods
Much smuggling occurs when enterprising merchants attempt to supply demand for a good or service that is illegal or heavily taxed. As a result, illegal drug trafficking, and the smuggling of weapons (illegal arms trade), as well as the historical staples of smuggling, alcohol (rum-running) and tobacco, are widespread. As the smuggler faces significant risk of civil and criminal penalties if caught with contraband, smugglers are able to impose a significant price premium on smuggled goods. The profits involved in smuggling goods appear to be extensive. The iron law of prohibition posits that greater enforcement results in more potent alcohol and drugs being smuggled.
Profits also derive from avoiding taxes or levies on imported goods. For example, a smuggler might purchase a large quantity of cigarettes in a place with low taxes and smuggle them into a place with higher taxes, where they can be sold at a far higher margin than would otherwise be possible. It has been reported that smuggling one truckload of cigarettes within the United States can lead to a profit of US$2 million.
Maritime drug smuggling
Maritime drug smuggling takes place under conditions that differ from those associated with a single land-border crossing. Maritime routes can connect several jurisdictions, ports and transshipment points before reaching a destination market, while vessels and cargo may pass through multiple commercial and logistical systems along the way. The scale, mobility and transnational character of maritime activity can therefore make responsibility and surveillance more fragmented. Drug smuggling at sea has consequently been conceptualized as a form of "blue crime", referring to serious criminal activity occurring in or across the maritime domain. Research on maritime drug smuggling further shows how ports and shipping routes connect production regions with transit and consumer markets across long-distance supply chains.
Rather than operating through entirely separate transport systems, drug-smuggling networks frequently exploit legitimate commercial shipping and port infrastructure. Maritime drug smuggling can involve sourcing and preparation for export, concealment, maritime transportation and transshipment, retrieval at a destination port, and subsequent inland distribution. These stages resemble functions found in legitimate logistics, including transport planning, storage, cargo handling and distribution, while concealment distinguishes the illicit flow from the legal goods moving through the same systems. Drugs may, for example, be inserted into otherwise legitimate cargo flows and removed at a later stage of the journey.
The actors involved in these operations do not necessarily form a single hierarchical organization. Research on drug-supply networks instead identifies flexible and partly decentralized structures in which organizers, financiers, brokers, transport specialists, facilitators and local distribution groups can perform separate functions. Brokers and intermediaries can be particularly important in connecting geographically separated actors and stages of an operation where direct relationships do not exist. This division of labor can distribute both information and risk across the supply chain, meaning that individual participants may only have knowledge of the specific stage in which they are involved.
Commercial ports form an important part of this system because they connect maritime and land-based transport while concentrating cargo, infrastructure, workers and logistical information. Research on European ports shows that criminal networks can exploit legitimate port processes to conceal, locate and retrieve drug shipments. Access to restricted areas, information about containers and knowledge of port procedures can therefore become valuable resources. Port and logistics workers may knowingly facilitate smuggling, but studies also show that involvement can result from social relationships, financial incentives, pressure or coercion. The available literature does not always make clear whether companies and employees were knowingly involved in smuggling operations or whether their infrastructure and services were used without their awareness.