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Organised crime: detailed exam questions
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Who is Joe Valachi- Member of the Italian mafia (received ‘kiss of death’ in prison) who broke the code of
silence (omerta)
- Testified before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (Cosa Nostra)
out of fear of being murdered
- Ratted everyone out + explained full working of the Cosa Nostra mafia
- Enormous public impact (first time televised → confirmed everything about all the crazy
things the Italians do – led to this confession by the police – pressured voor vrijstelling?)
- Merger of the two concepts of OC and ‘mafia’ fully accomplished
- Movies of the Godfather are based on his testimonies
- Law enforcement didn’t see everything he told → led to the US RICO Act
Compare the 3 models of OC (2, 10)
- Hierarchical, cultural & enterprise model → they describe organized criminal groups
(they can occur together, overlap is possible)
- Hierarchical
● Uitleggen wat het is
● Clear structure, ranking and organization → distinguishes leaders from other
members in the criminal enterprise
- Cultural
● Uitleggen wat het is
● The difference from the hierarchical model lies in how relationships within the group
are structured, because the types of criminal activities are similar among groups, as
they all exploit illicit markets for products and
services
- Enterprise
● Uitleggen wat het is
● They structure their illicit activities around the
demands of customers → they mimic legal markets,
some with hierarchy & others without
- Both the hierarchical and local cultural models focus on
how organized criminal groups are organized
- The enterprise model focuses on how organized criminal
activities are organized (!!)
- All organized crime activity is entrepreneurial in nature
as its ultimate purpose is a financial or other material
benefit
3 relationships between crime and business (2)
1. Parasitic relationship: the legal environment can unintentionally lend itself to abuse and
exploitation. Actors in the upperworld are victims.
2. Symbiotic relationship: the upperworld allows itself to be used or offers consciously
products and/or services to the underworld
3. Fusion: interests of OC and (part of) legitimate society run virtually parallel. OC had
become ensconced in the legal economy
,Invloed van cybercrime/cyberspace
- Less formal, more fluid networked connections among members of organized criminal
groups have developed, given the changing nature of the criminal marketplace, the
changing nature of cyber communications and the illegal products available via the
Internet and the Darknet
- This situation enables offenders to avoid face-to-face contact with each other - and in
many cases with their victims -, causing changes in the way that organized criminal
groups are structured.
- Organised crime also feeds terrorism and cybercrime through channels like the supply of
weapons, financing through drug smuggling, and the infiltration of financial markets
- The cyberspace facilitates OC
ECIM (5)
- European Crime Intelligence Model
- In 2010 Belgium was heading the European presidency
- We already knew the crime situation reports but we needed to do something more
● We need to connect operations with intelligence
● OCTA was not doing the job
- So we created the ‘intelligence cycle’
● To help share intelligence, assessment, priorities (OCTA), operations & feedback
- The Harmony Project (developed by the Belgian Federal Police)
● Aim: develop coherent security policy → all the organizations within the EU must
speak the same language, setting the same priorities
● Horizontal alignment: EU agencies – political priorities of JHA
● Vertical alignment: integration of European decision-making process in national
strategies
- This is how it works (worked cuz it’s still the OCTA)
● You start out with the picting (what is the threat), organized crime situation report,
look for intelligence gaps, data collection
● That is what Europol is doing, it facilitates
● The idea is that within that circle you start developing operations. This is what we
now call EMPACT. Together with the MS we are going to collect this is a treat for
our country and this is a threat for our country and we are going to work on that.
We are going to take initiatives to combat these threats. After some time we’re
going to develop an OCTA once again to see what had changed in the field
- Central role for Europol to play in this intelligence model
● Intelligence gathering & supporting the MS
● Their main component is the SOCTA
OC as a Trojan horse
- Paoli and Fijnaut: to pass reforms that would otherwise meet resistance from lower-lever
agencies and opposition of civil-rights organizations
- So basically it’s so that OC is a social construct. It was invented, named and considered
a priority
- People see this as a big threat that needs drastic response. This leads to massive
support of new legislation
, - They look at it as a ‘gift’ to tackle OC
- But they fail to see that these intrusive measures might kill them in their sleep as it
affects the values of society
- For example: UN call upon countries to adopt highly specialized and intrusive measures
like wire tapping
Explain why SOCTA is compared with the oracle of Delphi (3, 4)
- There was a situation where the oracle of Delphi said ‘a wooden wall will safe Athene’
→ there was a person who said that you couldn’t take this literally. He then said we
needed to build ships and that led to the victory of Athene
- So basically just like the oracle, the SOCTA doesn’t provide real information. It’s all logic
what they say. There is no real intelligence
- It describes a lot but there is nothing about the real threats
OC is a social construct, explain (35, 7)
- OC is not a crime but a criminal phenomenon → created by police, judicial officers and
politicians (since the ‘90s)
- We now see a list of OC → it’s a label (that unlocks new competences like wire
tapping)
- You should not only look at how many people are involved (offenders) cuz what about
someone who makes mass destruction weapons on his own
- Countries made this a big thing to enhance international cooperation & so that every
country would fight against drug offenses
Bespreek: law enforcement is more than enforcing a rule/legal act + example (1)
- The police see the problems and go to politics to ask for legislation
- Police put pressure on politics → influence policy and legislation
- Ex. Additional competences against OC like waiting for the delivery of the drugs was not
possible at first in Belgium
Why is the concept of OC seen as a vague concept
- There is no list of ‘organized crimes’
- The conceptualization of OC varies in different MS and is used to combat different types
of activities
- Since the Lisbon Treaty, EU has been emphasizing the seriousness of crimes as a
justification for policy interventions → but MS might also adopt policies against criminal
activities that are neither serious nor have a transnational character (over-
criminalization)
- This vagueness leads to different priorities, activities & strategies (fr example: the
involvement of economic sectors leads to more lenient policies)
Explain: risk-analysis (13)
- Risk assessment: methodological tools for OC assessment focus on threat, vulnerability,
harm & risk
- Analysis of risk → linking threat, vulnerability and harm
- The « ideal » model as it:
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