Axel takes a critical approach to the framing and the definitions of organised crime, and pays attention to the institutional interests behind the actions that are taken to combat it. As an anthropologist with long experience of seeing things from below he looks at crime as a cultural construct.

Criminal opportunities, he thinks, arise in the interstices between legal prohibitions imposed by idealist policy makers, and the underlying demand from the less perfect sections of the public. To contain the harm caused by this friction requires pragmatic realism as much as operational capability. A long-standing advocate for the regulation of markets for sex, drugs and gambling, he is particularly interested in questions of systemic corruption, unintended consequences and institutional obstacles to accountability and reform. Crime reduction involves political measures, market modifications and civil society engagement as much as the criminal justice sector.

Axel is currently working on maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea as the Project Coordinator for the Support to West African Integrated Maritime Security, addressing both piracy/armed robbery at sea, illegal and unregulated fishing and pollution offences. He is a Senior Fellow at the Global Drug Policy Observatory at Swansea University, and has recently completed an assessment of cannabis licensing regimes in Jamaica.

He has worked as a consultant for government agencies in the UK, for the European Commission, UNODC, the Caribbean Community and Market, the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States as well as private sector clients. Axel holds a Ph.D. and a BA from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.