Paper Criminal Behavior
200700018
Universiteit Utrecht
Teacher: Weverthon Barbosa Machado
Authors: …
References: 26
Words: 2076
Working group: 1
, Introduction
According to Bodelier (2021) people in the developed world were never as safe as now. Yet,
there is still a big, for most people unknown, number of criminal activities (Godson, R., &
Olson, W. J. 1993). A part of these unknown criminal activities happens in organized crime
(RTL Nieuws, 2021). Organized crime is described as criminal activities for material benefit
by groups that engage in extreme violence, corruption of public officials, including law
enforcement and judicial officers, penetration of the legitimate economy criminologists
describe organized crime as criminal activities for material benefit by groups that engage in
extreme violence, corruption of public officials, including law enforcement and judicial
officers, penetration of the legitimate economy (Van Dijk, 2007) In recent years more
knowledge about the functioning and work systems in organized crime has become known
(den Boer, 2001), but the reason for someone to participate in the world of organized crime
remains less researched. In this paper the primary focus is on adults and their reasons to join
organized crime and commit organized criminal activities. The research about adults in
organized crime is important because more knowledge can contribute to lesser criminal
activities and scientists can help these adults to prevent them from criminal behavior by
transferring scientific knowledge to politics, municipalities and involved organizations, so a
strong new policy can contribute to decrease the number of organized crime (Beetstra et al.
1994). Organized crime in a society can make sure that people in society feel less safe, also
organized crime can contribute to degradation and nuisance (Gilmour, 2008). Taken together,
this makes organized crime a societal problem (Neumann & Elsenbroich, 2017). This paper
will provide more insight into organized crime and its offenders. It will open with the
characteristics of organized crime offenders, then a literature review is conducted and finally
these taken together are used to draw a conclusion.
Characteristics
In this chapter we will describe the characteristic of an organized crime offender in
western countries. When it comes to organized crime in western countries, it concerns things
such as smuggling of illegal immigrants, drug trafficking, human trafficking for sexual
exploitation, arms trafficking, the trade in stolen vehicles and thigs such as money laundering
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