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.     

Law and criminal labels: The case of the French Métis in Western Canada

This paper examines the conflicts engaged in by the French Metis of Western Canada with the imperial state during the 19th century. More specifically, it is argued that the application of criminal labels corresponded to the level of struggle between the two parties. In the case of the conflict between the Metis and the H.B.C, “economic” forms of crime appeared at the top of the legal agenda. At a later conjuncture, when the legitimacy of imperial apparatuses was threatened, “political” crimes were paramount. Finally, with the ideological, institutional and economic hegemony of the Dominion state, the Metis were designated as “social” criminals. In each of these periods, legal struggles involving the Metis may be understood as surface manifestations of conflicts over political and economic power. This paper has benefited considerably from the comments and substantive work of Ron Bourgeault, from the critique of two anonymous reviewers and from the editorial work of Elizabeth Comack. Further, none of this work would have been undertaken but for the hospitality and comradeship of the faculty and graduate students at the Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto.     

Entrepreneurship and University Technology Transfer

This paper argues that it is important to devote greater attention to the study of entrepreneurship in technology transfer in the light of greater government attention, the growth in the phenomenon, the need to identify how wealth can be created from spin-outs, changes in the cultures of universities and differences with technological entrepreneurship in general. The paper summarizes the contributions made by the papers presented in the special issue in terms of their levels of analysis. At the spin-out level, issues are raised concerning identification of typologies of spin-out firms, the evolution of spin-outs and external resources. At the university level, issues concerning policies, internal resources and processes are discussed. An agenda for further research is elaborated which relates to the need to examine further levels of analysis: the academic entrepreneurs themselves and how they recognize opportunities and shape their ideas to meet the market; the nature of internal university environments, processes and resources; and the nature of the scientific discipline which may have implications for the process of creation and development of spin-out ventures.     

Drug offenders and criminal justice. Careers,compulsion, commitment and penalty

In the light of recent shifts in the availability of illicit drugs to, and use by, young people in the UK the article argues that current drug policy in the criminal justice system, which is fashioned around a model of problem or dependent use, is increasingly irrelevant as a diversionary (from punishment) mechanism. It is further suggested that many users of the key drug of the 1980s, heroin, have routinely eluded various realistic therapeutic/rehabilitative interventions because the model of problem or dependent use was refused by them, or, they were, in turn, refused by it. Despite the treatment ambitions of the British System of drug control, those seeking illicit pleasures and getting in trouble with the law have largely been subject to traditional judicial penalties. Finally, a re-incorporation of drug studies within general criminology and (youth) cultural studies is put forward.Paper presented to British Criminology Conference, Cardiff, July 1993