Methodological aspects of the Dutch National Threat Assessment

This paper discusses issues related to measuring organized crime as they have become manifest in the Dutch contribution to the EU Organised Crime Threat Assessment (OCTA). It intends to convey to a wider academic community certain issues of definition, methodology and accountability, understanding the NTA process in terms of the communication of risks in a context of competitive defining institutions.

Types of organised crime in Italy. The multifaceted spectrum of Italian criminal associations and their different attitudes in the financial crisis and in the use of Internet technologies

This paper discusses the opportunity to differentiate four different criminological types of organised crime in Italy by drawing on a subset of case studies and interviews to law enforcement officers and experts collected for two on-going research projects. We hypothesise that, since these types exploit different social opportunity structures for their criminal activities, they have different capacities of adaptation and react differently when confronted with different kinds of innovations and changes. We test these four types against two significant phenomena that have been deeply impacting Italian society, among others, recently: the commercialization of the Internet and the economic and financial crisis that has hit Europe since late 2008. We conclude that these types offer a valid help to guide our understanding of what organised crime is today in Italy, as well as to assess the capacity of the existing legal framework to properly face all them. These criminological types could also serve as lenses to filter the different experiences of organised crime in other European countries, thus facilitating comparative research.     

Understanding the Structure of a Large Heroin Distribution Network: A Quantitative Analysis of Qualitative Data

An analysis is reported of 2,408 wiretap conversations gathered in the course of prosecuting a heroin dealing organization in New York City in the 1990s. The five-step analysis, which included a social network analysis of phone contacts, revealed a large, loosely structured group of 294 individuals, most of whom had very limited contacts with others in the group. The group’s active core comprised 38 individuals with extended contacts, little status differentiation and some task specialization. A smaller more tightly connected group of 22 individuals was somewhat independent of the remainder of the core and appeared to constitute a “communal business”. The existence was not confirmed of the large criminal conspiracy described by the prosecution that operated at all levels of trafficking and dealing, from wholesale distribution to street sales. Rather, it appeared that the 294 individuals comprised one segment of the heroin market in the city. However, the discrepancy could be due to the fact that the prosecution drew upon a wider set of information about the individuals concerned than provided by the wiretap data. The study supports recent analyses that see organized crimes, such as drug trafficking, as mostly the work of small groups of loosely linked entrepreneurs rather than large, highly structured criminal syndicates.

Trade marks plus? the role of trade marks in the global economy and the danger of over-protection

This article examines the economic role of the trade mark, both as a structuring device and as a means of adding value to products. It shows how its role as a flexible structuring device that provides a distinct focus for goodwill derives from the special meaning of the term “origin” or “trade origin” in trade mark law, this being what a trade mark is supposed to indicate. Firms can control the identity that a trade mark signifies and confers on the products with which it is used without being tied to any particular set of production arrangements. This article also considers how goodwill can be a source of economic benefit both through reducing transaction costs and, in some cases, through adding value to products. This article then examines the economic rationale for the legal protection of trade marks and shows how this is analogous to the rationale for awarding property rights over tangible resources and different from that for other forms of intellectual property right. The pressure to expand the legal protection of stronger trade marks is explored and it is accepted that there is an economic case for doing so. However, it is argued that the additional protection must be carefully calibrated through definitions that take account of its economic rationale and avoid the danger of over-extending it. In particular, this danger of over-protection arises from making a false analogy between stronger trade marks and the kind of intangible output that is the subject of the other forms of intellectual property right.