Summary
Samenvatting texts Organised Crime
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TEXT 1: ORGANIZED CRIME A CONTESTED CONCEPT1. The shift in meanings, territorial scope and legitimacy
Shifted back and forth between 2 rival notions:
1) A set of stable organizations illegal per (op zich) or whose members systematically
engage in crime
2) A set of serious criminal activities mostly carried out for monetary gain
From “Who”: the individual offenders and their variable partnerships
To “What”: the criminal activities conducted (uitgevoerd)
Distinction between OC (capitalized) to refer to criminal organisations and OC (lower
case) to refer to criminal activities that require a degree of organization
The territorial scope of OC has also changed
- Originally OC was equated with racketeering (where there is extortion, an activity
necessarily territorially based and usually carried out only on a local basis)
- Since 1990s transnational basis of OC
The policy and scientific legitimacy and relevance of the OC concept have also carried
out over time
- Except for the US and Italy, other nations did not regard OC as a serious domestic
(binnenlands) problem until the late 1980s
- 1990s OC has become an accepted policy and scientific concept virtually throughout
the world
- Since the 1990s, the majority of governments, many international organizations,
(including the UN) have adopted bills, decrees, action plans or international treaties
specifically targeting OC
- Emphasize the transnational dimension of OC to increase their competencies and
powers and/or to harmonize and extend criminal laws and law enforcement
procedural powers across the MS
- OC has also become a legitimate scientific research topic
A) The American debate: from “What” to “Who”
Thrasher book “The Gang” constitutes the first full-scale treatment of OC OC
must not be visualized as a vast edifice (bouwwerk) of hard and fast structures
First US government attempt to study OC (the National Commission on Law Observance
and Enforcement)
structuring their data around categories based on criminal law, not based on criminals
“What” more important then “Who”
OC as a set of criminal entrepreneurial activities with the frequent involvement of legal
businesses and government representatives was abandoned after WWII
,From 1940s focus on criminals who allegedly constituted well-structured and powerful
criminal organizations
organization based approach (“alien-conspiracy” emphasis on foreign criminals)
Mafia-centered view of OC in the US
The merger of the 2 concepts of OC and mafia was fully accomplished in 1963
testimony Joe Valachi (Casa Nostra)
They defined OC in much broader terms to include less structured gangs and illicit
enterprises
This gave federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies an unprecedented
(ongekende) array of powers
The mafia-centered view continued to dominate the public perception of the problem (in
the US and internationally) romanticized novels and films (example: “The godfather”)
2. The American debate II: the merger of “Who” and “What”
The identification of the mafia with OC has been rejected by the majority of American
social scientists since the late 1960s
- Ideological, serving personal political interests and lacking in accuracy and empirical
evidence
Scientific attention was redirected from “Who” back to “What” (the supply of illegal
products and services)
OC became a synonym for illegal enterprise
Negative side-effect: OC is used to refer to both sets of criminal organizations and sets of
activities
Confusion between offender and offense often leads to circular reasoning
Strategy of American government broaden definition of OC to include other criminal
organizations involved full-time in the supply of illegal commodities
OC disappeared from US policy agenda during 1990s
US department of justice: “Law enforcement strategy to combat international OC” and
Obama administration: “Strategy to combat transnational OC”
OC is in both strategies a set of criminal organizations primarily interested in pursuing
gain with crime
, 3. The debate in Europe: prevalent focus on “What” with few exceptions
OC often equated with terrorist groups
Late 1980s consensus in Italy that OC consist of CO (in that context means Southern
Italian mafia organizations)
A mafia-type delinquent organization consists of 3 or more persons
Illegal enterprise dominant position in the scientific debate in Europe (1970s) and
dominant in the policy debate (1980s)
Focus on criminal activities for gain
The loose understanding of OC in terms of profit-making criminal activities has allowed
organized crime to become a successful policy term even in European countries that had
no mafia problems
Concern for OC first spread in the late 1980s
Given its vagueness and elasticity the term organized crime could be used to express the
fear that the Italian mafia groups could invade the rest of Europe
But also refer to profit-making criminal activities and entrepreneurs close to home or
to the real and imagined threats coming from the East (fall Iron curtain and implosion of
the Soviet Unio)
With a few exceptions, the official definitions of OC adopted in Europe draw from the
enterprise paradigm
The concept of OC is too vague to be transformed into a full-fledged (volwaardig) legal
category, fear that a legal definition would create legal controversy (onenigheid) that
might unduly (onnodig) complicate criminal trials
Impossible to adopt a uniform definition of OC
- Divergent (uiteenlopend) assessment of the underlying problem
- Different legal systems of the European MS
Eu developed 11 characteristics (served as a basis for a flurry of high-level policy
initiatives)
Due to its ambiguity OC has not become a full-fledged legal category
Europol proposed typologies of OC groups and, following the shift from mere “Organized
Crime Situation Reports” to “Organized Crime Threat Assessments”
All offenders engaging in profit-making criminal activities fulfill the definitional
requirements and thus belong to OC
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