Summary Lecture notes International Organised Crime
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Course
International organised crime
Institution
University College Utrecht (UCU)
This is a comprehensive summary of all the lectures seminars from the course "International Organised Crime" at the University of Utrecht. Basically, all the information you need for the Exam.
Week 1: Changing patterns and new objectives in transnational organized crime by Nagy
Terminology:
The mob – reference to the Italian Mafia/reference to organized gangs
The outfits – reference to the Italian Mafia
The rackets – racketeering is often associated with organized crime. It is the act of offering a
dishonest service to solve a problem that wouldn’t exist without the enterprise offering the
service.
Mafia – reference to organized crime / refers to enforced protection of property provided by
local, informal, autonomous, loosely organized groups, called ‘families’ or simply ‘mafias’
Cosa Nostra – North American mafia existing out of 25 ‘families’ and many smaller groups La
mala vita – the ‘bad’ life, used to refer to the organized crime in Italy
Crime figures are called: mobster, Mafiosi, man of honor, gangster, Goodfellas’
Terrorism: Based on ideology and not monetary
Roots of IOC
1890 – there was the lynching of 11 Italian immigrants that murdered the police chief David
Hennessy. Lynching means that someone is murdered by a mob to punish or intimidate groups. The
lynching took place after the trial of some of the Italians who killed David Hennessy. A lot of them
were acquired. Believing that the jury had been bribed, the mob broke into the prison and killed 11 of
the 19 people that murdered David Hennessy. This took al place in Louisiana.
Approximately 84% of the Italian immigrants came from Southern Italy and Sicily. These were largely
agricultural and overpopulated regions, where much of the populace had been impoverished by
centuries of foreign misrule, and an oppressive taxation system imposed on the South after Italian
unification in 1861. After unification, the Italian government initially encouraged emigration to relieve
economic pressures in the South.
1920 – the Sicilian mafia developed the 5 points gang in NY. At the end of the 1920 two factions of
organized crime were still existing, and ready to fight for the ultimate power. One was led by Masseria
and the other by Maranzano. The war was called the Castellammarese war and led to the death of
Masseria. Maranzano, so becoming the first leader of the American Mafia divided NY into 5 families.
Maranzano named himself the bosses of all bossed and demanded the families to tribute him. Not
everybody liked this and so Maranzano was killed by Lucky Luciano. As an alternative for the bosses
of all bosses Luciano set up ‘the commission’. Here every family would have an equal vote and say in
important matters and disputes between families.
Maxi Trials – in 1986 this trials started. Almost 500 Sicilian Mafiosi were arrested for committing
crimes. These arrests were based on the testimonies of pentiti. These are people who were primary
active in the criminal circuit (e.g. mafia) and then decide to cooperate with the police. Thomas
Buscetta was the first one to do this. benefits for pentiti are that they receive a shorter punishment,
protection, a new name and money to start a new life in another place. breakthrough for the judicial
world cause normally the judges were bribed
The Italian American mafia: It originated and developed from the original "Mafia" or Cosa nostra, the
Sicilian Mafia. The father of American organized crime is generally considered to be Sicilian-American
criminal Charles "Lucky" Luciano.
Italian Mafia, terms and definitions
Omerta – the obligation for members to keep everything a secret.
Vendetta: Code of honour
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,Paoli: mafia groups impose a ‘status contract’ on someone that wants to join, so they can become a
‘man of honor’. If necessary, he must be willing to sacrifice his life for the mafia family. The men of
honor are obliged to keep the composition, the action and the strategies a secret. This is also a very
good defense mechanism. Since the unification of 1861 mafia groups have been formally criminalized,
and by keeping everything a secret the mafia are able to stay away from getting arrested. By
becoming a ‘man of honor’, they also get party of the brotherhood.
Only thanks to trust and solidarity created by fraternization contracts does it become possible to
achieve specific goals and thus satisfy the instrumental needs of the single members.
Consigliere - is a position within the leadership structure of Sicilian, Calabrian and American Mafia.
The word was popularized by the novel The Godfather (1972), and its film adaptation. In the novel, a
consigliere is an advisor or counselor to the boss, with the additional responsibility of representing
the boss in important meetings both within the boss's crime family and with other crime families. He
is the family advisor who is always consulted before decisions are made.
Pentiti - the former people who were active in organized crime/terrorism and now decide to work
together with the police and the judicial system. By doing so he brings his family in danger, because
they are often killed. To prevent this, the family condemns the persons who is cooperation to avoid
retaliation. Two factors fostered pentiti’s boom:
1. Legislation granting them sanctioning and penitentiary benefits and creating a state
protection programme in 1991
2. Crisis of mafia legitimation system and Cosa Nostra’s use of violence
Field of criminal activity
Paoli: Unlike other contemporary organized crime groups, mafia’s do not content themselves with
producing and selling illegal goods and services. Though these activities have acquired an increasing
relevance over the past 30 years, neither the trade in illegal commodities nor the maximization of
profits has ever been the primary goal of these associations. The exercise of political domination has
always been preeminent. Even today, although most of mafia rules are no longer systematically
enforced, mafia families exercise a certain ‘sovereignty’ through a generalized system of extortion.
Despite their power, mafia fraternities have not been able to guarantee themselves a monopoly in
any sector of the illegal economy outside of Southern Italy. They often find themselves in minority
positions to control the whole underworld. Despite the growing relevance of economic activities, the
mafia has not become a set of criminal enterprises. Its history as well as its cultural and normative
apparatus prevent this transformation. The reliance on status and fraternization contracts produces a
high degree of flexibility and makes the multi functionality of mafia groups possible. Unlike other
western forms of organized crime, the meaning and danger of the mafia associations cannot be
limited to their involvement in illegal market. Their peculiarity lies in their will to exercise political
power and their interest in exercising sovereign control over the people in their communities.
La mano Near (black hand) was a form of extortion racket. It was a method of extortion, not a
criminal organization as such. Typical Black Hand tactics involved sending a letter to a victim
threatening bodily harm, kidnapping, arson, or murder. The letter demanded a specified amount of
money to be delivered to a specific place. It was decorated with threatening symbols like a smoking
gun, hangman's noose, skull, or knife dripping with blood or piercing a human heart, and was in many
instances, signed with a hand, "held up in the universal gesture of warning", imprinted or drawn in
thick black ink.
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, Racket = offering a form of criminal help to solve a problem what wouldn’t exist without the
existence of the cooperation that offers help.
Labour racketing: These racketeers extort union officials or bribe them with offers of favorable
contracts or settled disputes, or otherwise coerce them to accept certain terms or demands. Labour
racketeering is labour corruption committed by, in alliance with, or under the auspices of organized
crime groups. The types of crimes include extortion of employers by threatening unlawful strikes,
work stoppages, picketing, and workplace sabotage; and soliciting and receiving bribes from
employers in exchange for allowing the employer to ignore the terms of the collective bargaining
agreement. (Jacobs &Peters, 2003). So, mafia offers their help to solve a problem that wouldn’t exist
without the mafia, namely then they wouldn’t have the power to let the workers strike/stop.
Arsons scams: Arson is defined as the wilful and malicious burning or charring of property. There are
many types of arson crimes, including setting fire to one's property with fraudulent intent--such as to
collect insurance money. While the majority of arson crimes involve damage to buildings, arson can
also be committed by a person who sets fire to forest land or a boat.
Fencing: the crime of buying and reselling stolen merchandise—is one of the links that binds theft to
the larger social system. Without someone to dispose of stolen property, thieves would have to rely
on their own connections, and both the costs and the risks of crime would increase substantially.
it often wears the cloak of legitimate business and is carried out in a rational, business-like manner, so
that it has few of the qualities traditionally associated with crime.
The definition of organized crime
the understanding of organized crime has shifted back and forth between two rival notions: (1) a set
of stable organizations illegal per se or whose members systematically engage in crime, and (2) a set
of serious criminal activities mostly carried out for monetary gain
Van Dijck: ‘organized’ in the sense that is. 1 direct – direct threat to society by preying on its
members by acquiring illicit proceeds, by infringing rules of fair competition. 2. Indirect – indirect
threat to society by undermining the authority of the state. The authority of the state is undermined
if the state is not able to enforce compliance, to at least some minimal credible degree. The authority
does not have the power to actually protect the people from breaches of the law by others. An open
container definition can serve politics, because they can bring everything under it. Though vagueness
has in neutral terms a certain practical purpose, this does not have to be a positive one.
Definition we need to know: “What is essential to the definition of organized crime is the ability to
use, and the reputation for the use of violence or the threat of violence to facilitate criminal activities,
and in certain instances to gain or maintain monopoly control of particular criminal markets. Also
essential is that organized crime employs corruption of public officials to assure immunity for its
operations, and/or to protect its criminal enterprises from competition. It is these that are the
defining characteristics of organized crime and that best answer the question of what organized crime
is.”(Hagan, 2006:134)
Different models
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