SAMENVATTING ORGANISED CRIME
POSSIBLE QUESTIONS MANDATORY READER-TEXTS:
- What are the three main messages about the text?
In 3 lessen zijn er teksten die je wel moet lezen en studeren! staat onder core reading
Examen
- 1 kennisvraag: nummer tussen 1 en 31 en krijg je een vraag
- andere vraag: letter tussen A en G en dat verwijst naar de verplichte teksten uit de reader
o What are the 3 messages: what do you know about the text – what have you learned
from reading the text (keywords) – how/what/who… - help him find out if you
understand what you have read
LECTURE 1: Concept and Definitions
1. Introduction
Main points:
• (1) Law enforcement is more than merely enforcing a rule/legal act. It is also about
influence policy and influencing legislation!
o Phenomenon -> legislation -> enforcement?
o Law enforcement also has an influence on making legislation.
o You have a phenomenon that you see, people want to do sth. about it. So, they develop
legislation and need someone to enforce that legislation. But in reality, this is difficult:
discussions between police and legislators.
• (2) The concept of organised crime is a social construct.
o Not a crime, but a criminal phenomenon.
o Crimes vs. offenders: are we talking about crimes or about the (individual) offenders?
You should also take a look on the nature of a specific crime.
In the end we talk about: serious AND organized crime.
o Social construct: which means that it has been created by men.
• (3) Enforcement and policies difficult without a clear view on the problem: usefulness of
the concept ‘organised’?
Quote: “We have testimony that you walk like a duck, and you quack like a duck. Tell the court –are
you a duck?” PEOPLE TEND TO THINK IT IS ORGANISAD CRIME BCS WE DO HAVE A NOTION ABOUT
ORGANISED CRIME.
Early 20th century
• Political legitimacy
• Scientific legitimacy
Controversial concept inconsistently incorporating two notions:
• 1. Provision of illegal goods and services
• 2. Criminal organisation
o State capture: f.e. Latin-America different groups that want to have power of the
state and then turn the legislation etc. on their behalf (f.e. Escobar)
o Learned from the Italian mafia: parallel society between the legal and illegal.
= a criminal organisation could also be threatening to the legal economy.
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,There is also a temporal mismatch:
• United States: peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s
• Europe: much later
o Even in Belgium we’ve developed anti-terrorist policies etc.
Past 9/11
• Lost some momentum (in Belgium as well) but still high on the agenda!
o Last report-dates we’re from 2009
o But drugs markets are expanding in Belgium, we see synthetic drug labs…
2. History of the concept
2.1. The American roots
1896
• The term OC probably first used in the 1896 (annual report of the NY Society for the
Prevention of Crime)
o Protected gambling and prostitution
o Illegal business dealings involving politicians, police officers, lawyers, etc.
1920-1930
• 1920s and 1930s
o Development of illegal markets due to Prohibition
o Serious efforts to define and discuss OC by both academics and commentators.
o No specific reference to separate associations of gangsters (yet)
o Often synonymous with ‘racketeering’ (i.e. extortion, predatory activities and provision
of illegal goods and services such as illegal gambling, counterfeit documents and
trafficking in drugs and liquor)
• ‘The Gang’ (Thrasher, 1927)
o The first full scale treatment of OC is “the Gang”.
o No hard structures
o Links with the upper world
o Indispensable functions played by certain specialized persons/groups including doctors,
lawyers, politicians, etc.
1920-30/1945
• Between 1929 and 1931
o First federal government attempt to study OC (the Wickersham Commission)
o ‘What’ = more important than ‘Who’ (i.e., based on criminal law categories, not on
criminals)
“What kind of crimes are being committed that we need to do sth. about it” >>>
“who is committing it?”
• But things change… because of an influx of migrants (+survival economy)
o (mostly) Illegal ports, constructions (like Portuguese labours) and waste management
*Waste management – there is always going to be waste and where you dump it
does not matter.
• After Second World War
o Wickersham approach (i.e., ‘understanding of OC as a set of criminal entrepreneurial
activities with the frequent involvement of legal businesses and state representatives’)
abandoned.
o ‘Who ’ = more important than ‘What’
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, o From late 1940s onward, focus on foreign career criminals constituting well-structured
and powerful criminal organisations representing a threat to the integrity of American
society and politics.
Alien, parasitical corporation to destroy the United States
1950-1960
• New organisation-based approach (alien conspiracy: connecting criminal activities to the
ethnicity of people -> f.e. ‘Mocro-maffia’) clearly enunciated by Kefauver Senate
Investigation Committee (1950)
o Italian mafia-centred view of OC (La Cosa Nostra)
La Cosa Nostra
This Italian mafia-centred view of OC remained the official standpoint for almost
three decades!
o So, there was a need for increased federal involvement in enforcement of gambling and
drug laws.
o Federal Narcotics Bureau (later DEA) as major ‘moral entrepreneur’ of organisation-
based understanding of OC
• TURNING POINT: the (public) testimony of Joe Valachi in 1963
o Valachi testifies before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (Cosa
Nostra) it was televised…
This had an enormous public impact: first time a member of La Cosa Nostra on
television who confirms/admits everything in order to be granted immunity and
protection.
o Merger of the two concepts of OC and ‘mafia’ fully accomplished
• 1950s and 1960s
o Consolidation of the mafia-centred concept of OC
o The focus on NY City but how ‘true’ and ‘general’ was this picture?
o Proposal to specifically outlaw membership of La Cosa Nostra was rejected.
o Uneasiness with mafia paradigm demonstrated by many law-enforcement officials at
state and local levels + members of Federal Organised Crime Strike Forces, established
late 1960s and early 1970s.
They did not really believed that OC was only connected to Italians. They did see
others as well.
1970
• 1970 (RICO Act US Senate)
o Racketeer Influenced and Corrupted Organisations Act
o Definition of OC in much broader terms than Cosa Nostra only to include less
structured gangs and illicit enterprises.
However, ….
• Myth of powerful and centralized mafia organisation long continued to be claimed whenever
police budgets had to be raised or new legislation had to be passed.
• New legislation increased power (e.g., wiretapping and eavesdropping, informants, seizing
financial assets, …)
And …
• Public perception dominated by mafia-centred view on OC
2.2. The rise of the illegal enterprise paradigm
Past 1960s/1970-1980
• Idea of alien conspiracy rejected by most American social scientists
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, o Ideological
o Serving personal political interests
o Lacking in accuracy and empirical evidence
• Scientific attention shifted from ‘Who’ back to ‘ What’
• Focus on the supply of illegal products and services
o Focus on the marketplace rise of the expression ‘illicit’ or ‘illegal enterprise’
o The purpose of organized crime is to financially profit through crime and mainly
responds to public demand for services.
1970-1980
• Beginning the of 1970s: the war on drugs.
o We are still facing the legacy of the War on Drugs
We do not have a war on drugs in Antwerp.
o Instead of Maffia-> illegal enterprise -> also see RICO Act
• Fighting drugs in the US, while drugs are pouring in from abroad?
• Export of the concept of organised crime as an instrument to increase international
cooperation in the fight against drugs and to transfer law enforcement techniques to other
countries. every country needs to fight against drugs
o Ethan Nadelman (1994); Peter Luspha (1981)
o Law enforcement problems concerning drugs: case of François (Belgium), but also the
Netherlands (IRT).
François – head of the newly established anti-drugs gendarmery in Belgium -> “if you
want to be effective and disrupt the French: you need to focus on heroin and not on
cocaine. We are going to use unorthodox means” (he tried to infiltrate and make a
deal, took out confiscated drugs and gave it back to the informant – the informant
took off with the drugs and left fake drugs behind -> so basically, they tricked him.
François reacted: sold drugs himself and with that money he bought new drugs and
replaced that one that he took in the vault)
IRT – InterRegionalTeam
This led to the establishment of the commission van Traa + adoption of
drug policies (like BOM-policy etc.)
1980
• Side-effect of OC as a synonym for illegal enterprise!
o Term ‘OC’ used to refer to both
1. sets of people involved in illegal activities (e.g. Cosa Nostra) and
2. the sets of activities in itself.
o Thus: confusion between offender and offence, leading to circular reasoning (in which
we think okay we need to obey)
Confusing on what we need to focus
• As from the early 1980s, host of other organised crime entities listed next to La Cosa Nostra,
such as:
o Outlaw motorcycle and prison gangs
o Colombian cartels
o The Japanese Yakuza
o Eastern European OC groups
o ...
1990s onwards
• OC disappeared from US policy agenda during the 1990s
• Interest resurged since 2008
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