Criminality and resilience are part of an interlinked web of numerous and overlapping dynamics that are continually changing over time. For policymakers, understanding how these dynamics translate into vulnerabilities, and developing adequate responses is an immense challenge, particularly as transformations in organized crime dynamics have become marked in recent years. In this context, the value of the Index becomes clear. The Index not only measures the scale of criminal activity, but also identifies the strengths and weaknesses of institutional anti-organized crime systems. The vulnerability matrix illustrates the interaction between criminality and resilience by positioning each of the 193 assessed countries within one of four quadrants (see Figure 22). This approach enables stakeholders to monitor shifts in vulnerability specific to their own context and to respond to emerging risks.

Because the intersection of criminality and resilience is shaped by country-specific circumstances, each state has vulnerabilities that are particular to its own context. Some of these may be inherent or deeply entrenched and resistant to change, whereas others can realistically be addressed within a more immediate timeframe. Just as there are no 'one-size-fits-all' vulnerabilities, there are likewise no universal solutions for addressing them. Nevertheless, a shared objective unites countries: curbing organized crime and mitigating its impact while simultaneously strengthening countries' capacity to tackle criminality by enhancing frameworks needed to confront both current and future threats.

The Index visualizes this goal in the vulnerability matrix (see Figure 22), where the desired outcome is represented by countries moving towards the top-left quadrant, low criminality and high resilience, depicted in green. As of this iteration, almost 24% of states are situated in this quadrant – the countries that display the most favourable balance between resilience and criminality. That is not to say that such countries have reached their full potential in terms of reducing their vulnerability to organized crime. Indeed, even within this quadrant, country scores reflect a range of contexts, and amid ever-changing criminal dynamics, resilience efforts must be adaptable too. Nevertheless, this quadrant may be viewed as a benchmark that countries aim to meet. To that end, 21 countries (see Figure 23) were identified as having the shortest distance to travel in order to reach the low-criminality, high-resilience category, indicating their potential to achieve this goal within a relatively short time frame.

There is no single toolkit that can propel countries towards this quadrant regardless of their position within the vulnerability matrix. But two elements are essential: a clear understanding of their current criminality–resilience situation, and an awareness of how that situation may develop over time. To this end, four trajectory models have been developed, designed to forecast the path these countries are likely to follow, if no significant changes occur.¹ Building on the five years of data the Index has accumulated, these models have been developed by extrapolating from observed past trends in criminality. Based on these trends, an average change score is derived, which provides a clear and accessible way of inferring where criminality for each country is likely to be headed – assuming all else remains equal. Although the available Index data provides a good starting point for building forecasting models, they have their limitations, a consequence of the lack of historical data – which would need to span several decades rather than just the past five years – to accurately inform the predictions. However, over time, as more iterations of the Index are produced, the accumulation of data will allow for the development of more robust tools capable of making increasingly accurate and variable-sensitive predictions.

The four-year-trajectory prediction model shows that 28.6% of countries in the sample (six of the 21) would see an increase in their criminality scores by 2029. Meanwhile, the 15 remaining countries that are projected to reduce their overall criminality levels in that time frame would do so slightly.² Notably, there are outliers in the sample – countries that are projected to improve by a larger margin based on their past performance. Yet, by taking only one of the outliers out of the equation, the improvement for the remaining countries would be even less significant.

Based on the results of the Index, both past and present, this modelling suggests that current responses to organized crime are not only not yielding the desired results, but if the state-of-play remains the same, criminality dynamics are unlikely to change significantly in the coming years. Countries therefore need a course-correct that would allow for more meaningful strides towards minimizing the impact of organized crime on societies, and achieving the desired outcome of high resilience and low criminality.

The same data collected through the Index that enables a clear understanding of the current situation and foresight into how it may evolve over time can also be applied to identify the steps countries need to take to strengthen resilience and, in turn, reduce levels of organized crime. Designing such an analysis, however, is not straightforward. Across the three iterations of the Index, it has become clear that the relationship between criminality and resilience is neither simple nor uniform. Although the correlation is negative, it is not particularly strong, standing at a coefficient of −0.44. Moreover, the relationship is non-linear, varying considerably across countries.

Regardless of the variations in criminality contexts, there are commonalities in determining how resilience should be strengthened. For example, countries may favour the path of least resistance – often in the form of short-term, heavy-handed crackdowns that yield quick results, where long-term reforms (such as improving judicial efficiency, implementing anti-corruption reforms and building cooperation with non-state actors in policymaking) would be more effective but harder to achieve.

Yet even in their pursuit to counter criminality threats, states find that reforms are often made more difficult because of internal resistance, arising from criminal actors embedded at various levels of the state apparatus. State-embedded actors have consistently ranked as the most pervasive criminal actor type globally, increasing by 0.28 points to 6.04 out of 10 between 2021 and 2025. More importantly, the Index reveals a strong negative correlation between resilience and the influence of state-embedded actors, measured at −0.80 in the latest edition. In other words, contexts where state-embedded actors are powerful are associated with less effective regulatory and institutional frameworks for tackling organized crime. The strength of this relationship also exceeds that observed between resilience and any other type of criminal actor.

Building on this evidence, state-embedded actors were therefore identified as the primary obstacle to resilience and thus serve as a proxy to overall criminality for this analysis, allowing the hypothesis to be tested systematically. Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) design,³ the results provide robust evidence that improvements in resilience are linked to measurable reductions in the presence of state-embedded actors. Specifically, a one point increase in resilience corresponds to an average 1.80 point decline in state-embedded actors.⁴

Notwithstanding a range of variable conditions that could influence the pervasiveness of criminality, a separate analysis also allows for the direct impact of state-embedded actors on the scope and scale of criminal markets to be estimated. Preliminary models indicate that a one point decrease in state-embedded actors would result in a decrease in the criminal markets average by 0.14.⁵ In other words, the interconnectedness of criminality and resilience can be thought of as having a chain reaction: if, for example, a country's resilience were to increase by 2 points, its state-embedded actors score would see a reduction by an average 3.60 points, thereby resulting in a 0.49 point drop in the criminal markets average.

Drawing on the Index's 12 resilience building blocks, the same DiD design was implemented to produce estimates of the impact of each resilience indicator on the presence of state-embedded criminal actors.⁶ As shown in Figure 24, the DiD analysis indicates that eight of the 12 resilience indicators have statistically significant and negative effects on the presence of state-embedded actors, confirming that the relationship is unlikely to be driven by chance. These are 'prevention' (−0.28), 'victim and witness support' (−0.27), 'judicial system and detention' (−0.24), 'anti-money laundering' (−0.23), 'economic regulatory capacity' (−0.22), 'political leadership and governance' (−0.20), 'government transparency and accountability' (−0.19) and 'national policies and laws' (−0.17). Although the extent of the impact these indicators may have on state-embedded actors may well vary across countries, a statistical analysis shows that improving resilience in these areas may directly weaken the ability of state-embedded actors to manipulate state institutions for illicit gains and operate with impunity.

The remaining four indicators – 'territorial integrity’, ‘international cooperation’, ‘law enforcement’ and ‘non-state actors’ – also display negative point estimates, but their confidence intervals suggest the effects are not statistically significant. This implies that, considered individually, these four dimensions do not exert a direct impact on the existence or influence of state-embedded actors. However, this should not be interpreted as evidence that they are less important resilience indicators. Their role rather lies in reinforcing the broader resilience environment, functioning as integral parts of a holistic system rather than as standalone drivers in diminishing the power of state-embedded actors in the way the other eight indicators do. For example, 'international cooperation', although indispensable in addressing transnational organized crime, is not by itself enough to reduce the influence of state-embedded actors on criminal economies. A possible explanation may be the lack of mechanisms for translating bilateral, regional or global commitments into action at the national level where state actors themselves are responsible for their implementation.

In the case of the two key resilience pillars – ‘law enforcement’ and ‘non-state actors’ – when criminal elements infiltrate state structures it often undermines their ability to combat organized crime by eroding their independence. Civil society and the media frequently operate in the restrictive environment imposed by criminalized states, as evidenced by increasing attacks on the sector. Given such conditions, it is unsurprising that their role in confronting state-embedded actors can be highly constrained.

Nevertheless, these indicators, in interaction with other resilience indicators, can act as amplifiers to building resilience to organized crime by limiting state infiltration, where civil society are often actors of last resort. They may play the role of critical intermediaries where state-embedded criminal networks are prevalent. To explore this dynamic, a Conditional Marginal Effects analysis was conducted to estimate how resilience influences the presence of state-embedded actors across varying levels of civil society participation, as measured by V-Dem’s Civil Society Participation Index. The findings reveal that when civil society engagement is low, the impact of resilience on curbing state-embedded criminality is minimal. However, as civil society participation increases, the marginal effect of resilience grows substantially. This suggests that efforts to strengthen resilience at a broader level are most effective in reducing the influence of state-embedded criminal actors in environments where civil society is actively engaged.

Strengthening resilience is rarely quick or simple, yet its impact on curbing the presence of state-embedded criminal actors, and by extension criminality, is substantial and measurable. Even modest increases in resilience can yield large declines in state-embedded criminality. For policymakers, this is a critical insight, as meaningful progress does not depend on intensive institutional overhauls but can be achieved through intensely targeted small-scale reforms.

As shown by the Index data, large leaps in overall resilience are uncommon, with most countries experiencing only gradual shifts in aggregate resilience over time. In fact, large upward or downward changes are exceptional, with the largest single-country increase in average resilience measured at 0.58. Only three countries have increased their average resilience by 0.30 points or more, and 12 other countries have had a year-on-year increase by a margin of 0.20 to 0.29. Against this backdrop, resilience levels on a global scale have fallen by 0.03 points since 2023. These gradual shifts in overall resilience to organized crime reflect the complexities of the resilience construct itself, which encompasses institutional, legal, economic, governance and social dimensions.

Yet, the data also reveals that movement within specific resilience building blocks is far more common, and in some cases even substantial over short periods. In fact, it is not uncommon to see indicator-level increases of a full point or more at a country level. These changes are not just statistical curiosities – they represent actionable policy levers. Several resilience indicators have a demonstrably significant effect in reducing the influence of state-embedded actors. While transformative increases in aggregate resilience may be a long-term aspiration, the findings suggest that policy wins against state-embedded criminal actors are possible now through targeted reforms. Incremental progress in the right areas can curb the power of state-embedded actors, generate deterrent effects and set in motion broader institutional strengthening that ultimately lowers overall criminality.