A new horizon on organised crime: re-locating organised crime in America

Beginning in 1974, the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline Railway (BAM) dominated public life in the Soviet Union for the next decade. Declared complete in 1984, BAM was arguably the greatest and most costly construction feat in post-war Soviet history. Officially, the mainline was to serve as the “path toward communism” that would unite all Soviet citizens. This article explores the crime and corruption that surrounded the propaganda-driven world of the BAM. Although the railway led to few concrete accomplishments in either the industrial or social development of the USSR, the sociological and criminological consequences of BAM were profound. The highly visible presence of both petty and hard-core criminals on the railway revealed that life on the rails was not as progressive or futuristic as the state claimed. Instead, the dynamics of crime and control that intersected during the BAM's ten years of prominence revealed that the peculiarities of human nature, not what the state termed “communist morality,” defined those who worked on the project.     

The rise of the Red Mafia in China: a case study of organised crime and corruption in Chongqing

‘Red Mafia’ is the collective term for corrupt public officials in mainland China, mainly from the criminal justice system, who attempt to monopolise the protection business in the criminal underworld by abusing power. In contemporary mainland China, the Red Mafia has developed into an alternative system of governance that can control organised crime groups, enable them to flourish, and protect them where strong government and effective self-protection associations are absent. The author examines organised crime and corruption by analysing the Wen Qiang case, one of the most famous and widely publicised cases in Chongqing’s latest crime crackdown campaign. Drawing on interview data and extensive published materials, this paper offers a tentative definition of ‘Red Mafia’, develops a typology of organised crime, describes the emergence of the Red Mafia in China, explores how gangsters developed relationships with public officials, suggests why organised crime groups chose the Red Mafia as their preferred protection and enforcement mechanism, examines patterns of services provided, and explores the differences between the Red Mafia and other Mafia groups.     

An incipient taxonomy of organised crime

This article constructs a taxonomy of organised crime groups. It examines the existing literature and finds a sizeable gap in relation to the classification of organised crime groups. The article uses concepts from Weberian sociology to divide groups according to their primary motivations. Such a taxonomy can help develop understanding in the field of organised crime, and potentially allow for the development of more effective counter measures.     

A comparative study of British and German press articles on ‘organised crime’ (1999–2009)

Organised crime is the topic of many popular fiction teledramas and films, such as The Sopranos, The Godfather and Goodfellas. The relationship between fiction and fact is delicate. We argue that the same can be said for the influence of the press. How far does the press construct, rather than objectively recount an image of organised crime? We extracted 389 British and German articles from national newspapers that reported organised crime between 1999 and 2009, from the Lexis Nexis (now Nexis UK) database and the online archives of a number of German newspapers. We then analysed them using quantitative and qualitative methods of textual analysis. In this article, we analyse the British and German press discourses on organised crime between 1999 and 2009, to identify their rhetoric and compare their reporting. To do this, we will 1) define terms and explain our methodology; 2) provide a general overview of statistics; 3) provide two specific analyses of reporting of organised crime and 4) discuss our findings.     

Farmers,factories and funds: organised crime and illicit drugs cultivation within the British Vietnamese community

This article explores the growth of organised crime within the Vietnamese community with particular reference to the cultivation of cannabis, money laundering and the smuggling or trafficking of children. The article begins by exploring the history and diversity of the ‘Vietnamese community’ in the United Kingdom and the role of Vietnamese culture in shaping their criminal enterprises. It then draws on research involving two sets of qualitative data: one set is based on 45 interviews with law enforcement personnel based in Vietnam and the United Kingdom as well as with key stakeholders in the Vietnamese community; the other set is based on structured questionnaires issued to 34 Vietnamese residents in Britain, 24 of whom are here illegally. It examines the relationship between illegal immigration of Vietnamese citizens to Britain and the urban cultivation of cannabis, in what has become known as ‘cannabis factories’, and the laundering of the profits abroad to Vietnam. After exposing the logistics of Vietnamese illegal immigration into Britain, the article concludes that those involved in cannabis cultivation, money laundering and people smuggling are primarily motivated by profit rather than ‘lifestyle’ concerns, and operate within what theorists of organised crime refer to as the ‘mono-ethnic criminal network’.     

Transnational organised cyber crime: distinguishing threat from reality

Cybercrime has become an integral part of the transnational threat landscape and conjures up pressing images of nefarious and increasingly complex online activity. More recently, the concept of ‘organised crime’ has been attributed to cybercriminality. There has been subsequent disagreement and confusion concerning whether such crime is a derivation of traditional organised crime or an evolution of such crime within the online space. This opaque state of affairs has been exacerbated by the relative lack of clear evidence attesting to and supporting either scenario. Technological advances have always been used to the advantage of the criminal fraternity. The crucial question that remains is whether those advances have merely facilitated the commission of physical crime or whether in fact they have led to the creation of a new wave of traditional, but virtual, organised crime.     

Reducing and preventing organised crime: An evidence-based critique

Theory and practice in crime prevention and crime reduction have developed and changed significantly, but attention has been focused largely upon conventional forms of crime (especially street crime) and upon situational approaches to their reduction. Drawing on research with a variety of relevant organisations across Europe, this article explores the possibilities of developing more effective crime reduction strategies in respect of organized crime, an area in which (despite important exceptions, particularly in relation to financial regulation), law enforcement rather than prevention has continued to dominate the thinking and the practical responses of the police and other relevant agencies. It illustrates the difficulties of evaluating prevention in the many areas in which data quality on crime levels and their organisation are poor, but also gives examples (mainly financial crime) where private sector data quality are good enough to demonstrate effectiveness. It differentiates impact on crime from impact on the organisation of crime, and between market crimes involving voluntary vice and predatory crimes involving direct harm to victims, concluding that current performance indicators for enforcement agencies may need substantial revision if the focus shifts to organised crime reduction.     

Modernisation and clean government: Tackling crime, corruption and organised crime in modern Taiwan

Taiwan's formal title is the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan because it is the continuation of the government of mainland China that fled to Taiwan in 1949 and has survived there ever since. The rulting party in the ROC is the Kuomintang (KMT, the Nationalist Party of China). The ROC government on the mainland was plagued with problems of corruption at almost all levels, while the regime on Taiwan successfully reinvented itself and oversaw a remarkable economic transformation of that island. This article considered the ROC's corruption problems on the mainland and attempts to explain why these problem shave proved to be so intractable. Corruption played a major part in undermining the Kuomintang's rule on the Chinese mainland. Once the ROC moved its seat of government to Taiwan in 1949, it was forced to take a very different approach to crime and corruption. The next section deals with the evolution of the KMT on Taiwan while the final part of the discussion looks at the problem of organised crime on the island. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Economic structure and vulnerability to organised crime: Evidence from Sicily

The economic analysis of organised crime suggests that some economic activities are particularly vulnerable to penetration by criminal organisations. This paper provides an analysis of the structure of the Sicilian economy and shows that, when compared with other Italian regions, it is characterised by a disproportionate presence of such activities. In particular, the economy of Sicily appears characterised by: (i) a large dimension of traditional sectors, such as the Construction sector, which also has a strong territorial specificity; (ii) a large presence of small firms; (iii) a low level of technology; (iii) a large public sector. The joint presence of these features creates fertile soil for the typical activities of organised crime, such as extortion and cartel enforcement. Hence, we propose an alternative explanation of the persistence of organised crime with respect to explanations based on cultural and social factors.     

Corruption prevention: A course for police officers fighting organised crime

In literature one often finds education and training are given as possible prevention methods to cope with corruption but with little evidence or information on how to deal with the problem of how to set up such a course. This article is about the course set up by the College for Criminal Investigation and Crime Control, the Netherlands, concerning corruption prevention training for police officers. The aim of this course is for participants to gain insight into their own decision process; that they decide, what they decide and what the consequences of their decisions can be. Gaining insight is intended to make them less vulnerable to corruption. It is a three-day course in which corruption prevention is approached from an individual point of view. The article will start with a theoretical framework,after which the course is described. It offers a practical means of addressing an issue that attracts much attention but little guidance on its resolution. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The incantations of the EU organised crime policy making

This article provides an analysis of the knowledge base of organised crime assessments and policy making in the European Union. It is argued that the current European organised crime (threat) assessments are no reliable and relevant instruments to make meaningful statements about organised crime. The data collection system of the current assessments is defective and to a large extent dependant on what Member States decide to disclose and not based on clear developed concepts, definitions and methods. There is no discernable “counting unit” as a basis for deducing threats or risks. More fundamental: the definition or criteria list used is defective, providing no basis for further deductions or conclusions. The conclusions of the open versions of the European reports are of a very general nature, not substantially different from what can be found in open sources. Though European decision making claims to be founded on these assessments, it looks more like a ritual incantation than a knowledge based process.

---

The end of organised crime in the European Union

So much has been written—and vigorously contested—about ‘organised crime’ (OC) that the impending fall of this familiar icon may come as a shock, both to its detractors and to those who take it for granted. Yet that moment may be upon us, for reasons that this paper will explore, as the European Union shifts the vocabulary within which policies on police cooperation are articulated. A pivot of this change is the EU Council Decision on Europol, first debated by the Council in late 2006 and anticipated as applying from 2010 onwards. This will shift the scope of Europol’s work from ‘organised crime’ (attributing qualities to criminality) to ‘serious crime’ (concern with impacts and harms falling on individual and collective victims); will transfer financing of Europol to the Community budget; and so will initiate parliamentary scrutiny. These issues in security governance are explored from ‘northern’, ‘southern’ and ‘eastern’ European perspectives and in the contexts of ongoing enlargement and democratisation of the EU.

---

The United Kingdom threat assessment of serious organised crime

The United Kingdom Threat Assessment describes and assesses the threats posed to the UK by serious organized criminals and considers how those threats may develop in the future.     

Narcomessages as a way to analyse the evolution of organised crime in Mexico

Drug-related homicides in Mexico have increased to levels never before seen and organised crime has evolved accordingly, becoming more fragmented and diverse. This work analyses the evolution of organised crime and drug-related violence in Mexico by examining how drug trafficking organisations (DTOs) communicate through the messages left next to executed bodies from 2007 to 2011. Results suggest that the use of narcomessages has changed and developed in parallel with the evolution of organised crime. In the beginning, DTOs used their victims merely to position themselves. Over time, as the organisations became stronger, they began to direct and sign their narcomessages. By 2009, rivalries were firmly entrenched between several criminal groups, even while the increasing violence led to the creation of new groups with the stated purpose of defending citizens. The evolution of organised crime is observed by the fragmentation of existing groups, the consolidation of new alliances, and the creation of new groups.     

Diamonds,gold and crime displacement: Hatton Garden,and the evolution of organised crime in the UK

The 2015 Hatton Garden Heist was described as the ‘largest burglary in English legal history’. However, the global attention that this spectacular crime attracted to ‘The Garden’ tended to concentrate upon the value of the stolen goods and the vintage of the burglars. What has been ignored is how the burglary shone a spotlight into Hatton Garden itself, as an area with a unique ‘upperworld’ commercial profile and skills cluster that we identify as an incubator and facilitator for organised crime. The Garden is the UK’s foremost jewellery production and retail centre and this paper seeks to explore how Hatton Garden’s businesses integrated with a fluid criminal population to transition, through hosting lucrative (and bureaucratically complex) VAT gold frauds from 1980 to the early 1990s, to become a major base for sophisticated acquisitive criminal activities. Based on extensive interviews over a thirty year period, evidence from a personal research archive and public records, this paper details a cultural community with a unique criminal profile due to the particularities of its geographical location, ethnic composition, trading culture, skills base and international connections. The processes and structures that facilitate criminal markets are largely under-researched (Antonopoulos et al. 2015: 11), and this paper considers how elements of Hatton Garden’s ‘upperworld’ businesses integrated with project criminals, displaced by policing strategies, to effect this transition.     

Explaining crime in developing countries: The need for a case study approach

The relationship between crime and development typically has been investigated within the theoretical umbrella of three dominant frameworks (modernization, underdevelopment, routine activities) and by the analysis of cross-national, statistical correlations between developed and developed countries. We outline the empirical, methodological, conceptual and theoretical weaknesses of these studies. The categories developed and developing are invalid when studying crime and change and the defects of existing approaches can only be overcome by a case study approach to the relationships of patterns of crime in different countries.     

From Triads to snakeheads: organised crime and illegal migration within Britain's Chinese community

This article revisits the continued existence of organised crime within the Chinese community, with particular reference to snakeheads and the trafficking or smuggling of illegal migrants. This article begins by exploring the history of Chinese organised crime within the United Kingdom and situates its continued existence within an ever more diverse ‘Chinese community’. It then draws on research involving three sets of qualitative data: one set is based on 60 interviews with law enforcement personnel based in China and the United Kingdom as well as key stakeholders within the Chinese community; the other set is based on structured questionnaires issued to 25 Chinese residents currently illegally residing in the United Kingdom; the final set is a review of the five free Chinese newspapers analysed over a 2-week period for relevant advertisements relating to migration. It then explores the mechanisms which enable illegal migrants to obtain criminal employment and discusses the motivations of those involved.