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Fully Typed Lesson 5_OC
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This document contains the fully typed lesson of lecture 5 of the course Organised crime
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Today I will cover 2 lectures, the one on organised crime groups and the second oneabout policies. Today I will have seen all lectures that needed to be seen. You need to
study all the slides that have been provided on Ufora and 3 text. One on the concept of
organised crime, the second one is the times and thoughts from vanderbeke and myself.
How we think about assessing OC in Belgium and third one is the one from myself and
Anke on the EU policies and organised crime. 3 text that you should read and know and
the presentations that are online.
1. INTRODUCTION
This lecture will focus on different type of crime groups that have been identified and
studied thus far. Basically, you need to know how individuals organise themselves into
organised crime groups. You should know the different models. Basically, very easy.
Organised Crime is easy, it is about people committing crimes for a certain amount of
time, working together. So basically, how they work is based on familiarity, structure,
rituals. It is based on nationality. So, what are factors that help explain why an organised
crime group looks like it is?
2. KEY ISSUES
3. MODELS
So you have different models: .. inaudible. So basically, if you start looking into
organised crime research the one thing that every law enforcement agency has done
and government organisations is looking into organised crime who are they? Whoa are
the persons committing the crimes? Who are these persons, how do they interact with
each other how large is the group, how well is it infiltrated in the upper segment of
society and do they use lawyers, accounts and do they have the knowledge
themselves? Are they recruiting accounts who facilitate organised crime? So basically
you are looking at the perpetrators here.
3.1. Models and structure of organized crime
Models and structure of organized crime
• Law enforcement, researchers, non-governmental and international organizations have
examined various manifestations of organized crime in different world regions using
informants, police and court records, participant observation, interviews with
community members, economic analyses and historical accounts.
• Variation is reported in both the size, scope and activities of organized criminal
groups.
So you have large groups, large group evolved in different type of activities today we
see it very often: Poly criminals.
, Market driven organized crime
• A UNODC global assessment of nine distinct illicit product markets and flows concluded
that the criminal activity is driven by the markets and products, rather than by the
groups involved. As the study points out: "most organized crime problems today seem
to be less a matter of a group of individuals who are involved in a range of illicit
activities, and more a matter of a group of illicit activities in which some individuals and
groups are presently involved" (UNODC, 2010).
Basically, back in the days when you were thinking about OC as an alien invasion,
remember in the US, the Italian mafia, that is corruption. Basically, people thought that
criminal activities were inherently connected to groups to OC. Now we know that his is
not the case. OC groups are opportunistic. They are looking for making profit and they
are looking at different markets: Weapons, drugs human trafficking and that he volume
of the criminal activit that is occurring is due to the effectiveness of the products and not
by the groups involved.
Models and structure of organized crime
• Opportunities and demand for illicit goods and services generate groups willing to
exploit those opportunities.
Up until the ’70 in the US the ideas were that there is a group of the population, the
offend ants, who do not want to integrate with society and make money and living
illegally. So whatever they were doing it was a reflection of the group themselves. From
research and especially with the adaption of the illegal enterprise idea that OC and
criminal organizations are like enterprises: it is seeking to make profit, dealing with
goods and services (goods being drugs, providing drugs, weapons and people for
sexual entertainment; services like money laundering, hitmen, also people with
knowledge). So basically, it is the wants of the customers that generate goods and this
is a turning point in thinking about the who and the hat if we are talking about the who,
up until the ‘70s. The focus was on the groups and that the groups were omitting crime
and that if you take these groups away, crime will not occur. So that was the main idea.
The idea of taking away criminals of the streets will make sure that crimes is excused.
We’ve been known that it is opportunity that generates groups. If we are talking about
the war on drugs f.e. you would think, I will take away the people involved, the criminals
and by cleaning the HR of these groups they will disappear. That is not the case that
has never been the case looking at the war on drugs in the US in the 70s that has never
been the case. Whenever you take out Pablo escobar of these big drug baron, that drug
trafficking will disappear? NEVER.
If people are asking for these products and groups there will be people involved. It is the
same when a friend of mine a former DEA officer was talking about legalization, so why
not legalize these goods and service? This will allow OC to disappear. This is once
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