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Samenvatting core readings Organised Crime
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- Universiteit Gent (UGent)
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CORE READINGS ORGANISED CRIMETEKST 1: ORGANIZED CRIME: A CONTESTED CONCEPT
➢ Concept ‘organized crime’
Many contradictory meanings since it began to be used in the US more than a 100 years
ago
The concept had moments of veritable policy success → was used to indicate different
criminal phenomena as serious criminal problems
The different criminal actors & activities that belong under this label make it a vague
umbrella concept
o Can’t be used without specification as a basis for empirical analyses, theory
building or policy making
1. THE SHIFTS IN MEANINGS, TERRITORIAL SCOPE & LEGITIMACY
➢ Meanings of OC have changed repeatedly over time
This expression is now like a psychiatrist’s Rorschach blot → attraction as well as a
weakness is that one can read almost anything into it
Understanding of OC shifted back & forth between 2 rival notions
1) A set of stable organizations illegal per se or whose members systematically engage in
crime
2) A set of serious criminal activities mostly carried out for monetary gain
➢ Depending on time & place
Some authors, national & international policy and law enforcement agencies emphasized
the “Who”
o The individual offenders & their variable partnerships
Others gave more relevance to the “What”
o The criminal activities conducted
➢ The “Who” & “What” distinction → Smith
More recently → Hagan introduced distinction between Organized crime (capitalized) and
organized crime (Kleine letters)
o Organized crime → to refer to criminal organizations
o organized crime → to refer to criminal activities that require a degree of
organization
➢ Evolution of the OC debate = shift from “What” to “Who” & a reverting tide from “Who” to
“What” with an increasing merger of the 2
However not all countries fall neatly into this scheme
1
,➢ The 2 basic & rival notions of OC have been used interchangeably & simultaneously
As of 1950s → assumption that criminal organizations were responsible for most serious
criminal activities for gain spread in the US
However, numerous researches have proven this assumption to be wrong → so wrong
that most academics now have to choose between 1 of the 2 rival notions of OC
o Policy makers & law enforcement agencies realize that stable, large-scale criminal
organizations aren’t the only ones engaging in profit-making criminal activities
o So they included also networks, gangs, cells and any group composed of at least 3
people working together for some time in the definition of criminal organizations
• For some agencies and scholars, organized crime seems to mean little
more than co-offending by more than two perpetrators
➢ The supposed territorial scope of OC also changed
Originally: OC equated with racketeering
o The core of it is extortion
o An activity that is necessarily territorially based & carried out only on a local basis
Since the 1990s: many researchers, government agencies & international organizations
(form EU to UN) emphasized the transnational nature of organized crime
➢ The policy & scientific legitimacy & relevance of the organized crime concept have also varied
considerably over time
Except for the US & Italy, most nations did not regard organized crime as a serious
domestic problem until the late 1980s
But media accounts of organized crime & mafias have always fascinated the general public
Only since early 1990s, organized crime became an accepted policy & scientific concept
throughout the world
➢ Since 1990s, majority of governments & many international organizations (incl. UN) have
adopted bills, decrees, action plans or international treaties specifically targeting OC
They often foresee extensive new prosecutorial powers to law enforcement agencies
US already did this in the 1960s & 1970s
➢ Fight against OC has been used to justify far-reaching criminal justice reforms in several
countries in Europe
International organisations have been keen since the 1990s to emphasize the
transnational dimension of the OC-threat
o They did is in order to increase their competencies & powers and/or to harmonize
& extend criminal law enforcement procedural powers across their MS’s
o This harmonization = main goal of the 2000 UN Convention against Transnational
Organized Crime
➢ OC has also become a legitimate scientific research topic → attracts attention from
criminologists & other social scientists during 1990s & early 21st century in Europe
The concept has already reached its apex of popularity → it is being replaced with
alternative concepts
2
,1.1. THE AMERICAN DEBATE: FROM “WHAT” TO “WHO”
➢ Organized crime is originally an American concept
Term first used in the 1896 annual report of the New York Society for the Prevention of
Crime → it was used to refer to gambling & prostitution operations that were protected
by public officials
➢ Serious efforts to define organized crime in the 1920s 1930s when Prohibition (=drooglegging)
enhanced the development of North American illegal markets
Several meanings, but still rarely used to signify separate associations of gangsters
Most often, OC was made synonymous with racketeering
o Another loose expression that referred to extortion, predatory activities, and the
provision of a variety of illegal goods and services, ranging from illegal drugs and
liquor to gambling and counterfeit documents
OC must not be visualized as a vast edifice of hard & fast structures → there were links
with the upper world → indispensable functions for professional criminals played by
certain specialized persons or groups, including doctors, lawyers, politicians and corrupt
officials (Trasher: book The Gang)
➢ First US government attempt to study OC
In their report on the costs of crime, they dealt extensively with organized crime
They structured their data “around categories based on criminal law, not categories based
on criminals → what was more important than who”
➢ After WWII → understanding of OC as a set of criminal entrepreneurial activities with the
frequent involvement of legal businesses & government representatives was abandoned
From then on, conceptualizations focused on foreign career criminals who allegedly
constituted well-structured and powerful criminal organizations that posed a threat to the
integrity of American society & politics
As opposed to previous analyses, the role played by politicians, public officials,
professionals, and other representatives of the “respectable classes” was largely played
down or ignored
➢ So: new organization-based approach
“alien conspiracy” due to its emphasis on foreign criminals
Most clearly enunciated by the US Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized
Crime in Interstate Commerce (Kefauver as chairman)
But lack of evidence!
o However, the Committee set out the terms of an Italian mafia-centered view of
organized crime → remained official standpoint for 3 decades
o This identified organized crime with a nationwide, centralized criminal
organization dominating the most profitable illegal markets, which allegedly
derived from an analogous parallel Sicilian organization and largely consisted of
migrants of Italian (and specifically Sicilian) origin.
3
, ➢ By stressing the Mafia’s control of US illegal markets → Kefauver demonstrated the need for
increased federal involvement in the enforcement of the gambling and drug laws
The Federal Narcotics Bureau was the major “moral entrepreneur” of the new
organization-based understanding of OC
➢ Merger of 2 concepts: OC & mafia
Fully accomplished when Joe Valachi testified
o He recalled his experiences as a low-ranking member of an Italian-American mafia
association (La Cosa Nostra)
o He provided many details about its internal composition & illegal activities
o Valachi’s views were popularized among the American public thanks to television
coverage
➢ The mafia-centered concept of OC was the result of a focus on New York City
It proved unsuitable for devising valid law enforcement strategies for the entire United
States
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupted Organizations Act (RICO-act)
Many state commissions on organized crime established in response to the debate → at
best paid lip-service to the concept of Cosa Nostra as an all-encompassing criminal
organization
o Instead they defined organized crime in much broader terms to include less
structured gangs and illicit enterprises
➢ The myth of a powerful and centralized mafia organization representing a threat to America’s
political, economic, and legal systems long continued to be used whenever police budgets had
to be raised or new legislation increasing federal jurisdiction had to be passed!
New legislation gave federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies an unprecedented
array of powers
➢ The mafia-centered view of OC also continued dominating the public perception of the
problem
Dozens of books & movies about it (The Godfather: so successful → shaped the general
understanding of OC and the mafia in the US & elsewhere)
➢ Donald Cressey → La Cosa Nostra constituted a hierarchical and “rationally designed”
organization, very close to Max Weber’s ideal type of legal-rational bureaucracy and capable
of operating in contemporary America
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