Policing organized crime

Conclusions Recent criminological research in the Netherlands underscores the fact that organized crime is embedded in society and the overall picture makes it clear that police emphasis on a crime fighting model of the police, based solely on criminal law will not be entirely effective. Therefore, the Twente police force developed a new strategy of policing organized crime in their region. This strategy is based on criminological knowledge and on the approach of community policing: preventive, pro-active and integrated actions taken by various partners of the police in order to reduce illegal activities of organized crime groups. This strategy, however, can only succeed when two conditions are satisfied. First, this approach can only function in an open democratic society in which numerous public and private organizations and the public feel responsible for the emergence of organized crime in their environment. Secondly, the police force and their partners must be (relatively) free of corruption. This implies that this strategy can only be effective in societies in which organized crime has not deeply penetrated democratic institutions and business organizations. Respectively Commissioner of Police and head of the Division Organized Crime of the Twente Police force and Professor of criminology and director of the International Police Institute (IPIT) at the University of Twente. PO Box 217, 7500 EA Enschede, The Netherlands. We would like to thank Alexis Aronowitz of the IPIT for her comments on an earlier draft of this paper and for her grammatical corrections, as well as the members of the editorial committee for their suggestions for improvements.     

Partners in organized crime

As Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski maintains, the ultimate cause for the supremacy of Stalinist totalitarianism was the complete lack of respect for the rule of law.1 This brief look at the situation in Bulgaria — a former Communist state — gives us a case in point of the continuing residue from that history.     

跨国有组织犯罪的主要类型

随着全球一体化进程的加深,跨国有组织犯罪出现了多样化的趋势,并且,其中有些类型的发展日益猖獗,其危害性亦愈来愈严重。系统研究当今跨国有组织犯罪的主要类型,对有效打击这类犯罪无疑有着重要的实践意义。     

Women in transnational organized crime

The last two decades have seen a number of publications showing that women play an important role in transnational organized crime. The recent focus on this subject has revealed a growing body of evidence to suggest that women have been active as members and leaders of criminal organizations around the world in various periods of history. This evidence has cast doubt on the prevailing idea of a ‘sudden rise’ of female power and could provide us with new explanations for the rise of women to the top of the criminal world. This article shows that the transnational and fluid opportunities and the attractive image of crime (associated with wealth, power and freedom) seduce women into entering the criminal world. The changing character of organized crime provides women with new criminal markets and clients.     

The paradoxes of organized crime

The paper argues that the concept of organised crime inconsistently incorporates the following notions: a) the provision of illegal goods and services and b) a criminal organization, understood as a large-scale collectivity, primarily engaged in illegal activities with a well-defined collective identity and subdivision of work among its members. Against this superimposition, the author's contention is twofold: (1) The supply of illegal commodities mainly takes place in a `disorganized' way and, due to the constraints of product illegality, no immanent tendency towards the development of large-scale criminal enterprises within illegal markets exist. (2) Some lasting large-scale criminal organizations do exist, but they are neither exclusively involved in illegal market activities, nor is their development and internal configuration the result of illegal market dynamics.For Susan Strange: mentor and friend