Selected Issues: Organised Crime
Lecture 1: Concept & Definitions..............................................................................................2
Lecture 2: Research on organised crime: approaches & methods ............................................ 23
Lecture 3: Causes and facilitating factors of organised crime .................................................. 39
Lecture 4: Organized Crime Markets....................................................................................... 50
Lecture 5: Models of Organised Criminal Groups .................................................................... 78
Lecture 6: Organised crime policies ....................................................................................... 87
Lecture 7: The Crime-Terror Nexus ......................................................................................... 97
Lecture 8 ............................................................................................................................. 105
The Belgian synthetic drug market: social network analysis and financial crime scripting ....... 105
Forensic Intelligence, Organized Crime Networks & Disruption = how law enforcement better
disrupt networks ................................................................................................................. 111
Lecture 9: Administrative approach to organised crime: ARIEC Limburg ................................. 126
1
,Lecture 1: Concept & Definitions
1. Introduction
Main points:
1. Law enforcement is more than merely enforcing a rule/legal act.
o Phenomenon -> legislation -> enforcement?
• Police has to follow the rules, but they do more than enforcement
alone
• They have an impact on what politicians enact as law → they request
things, people,…
• This is the moment organized crime became a big thing → police
needed additional powers because we are up against an army of
criminals
▪ But what are we up against really? The big bad wolf? But how
many wolfs are there, what do they look like,…? We do not
know
▪ Bart de Wever: red pill (reference to ‘The Matrix’ = movie about
living in virtual reality) → if you take the blue pill, you see
things that you want to see, but it is not reality!
In Antwerp (thanks to De Wever) they started to take
the red pill → you see buildings being used as
synthetic drug labs, illegal dumpings poisoning
water,…
What government institution are criminals most
scared of? Tax administration!
2. The concept of organised crime is a social construct.
o Not a crime, but a criminal phenomenon.
• It is behavior that we agree is OC. Serious crime, at least punishable by
3 years of imprisonment
o Crimes vs. offenders.
3. Enforcement and policies difficult without a clear view on the problem: usefulness
of the concept ‘organised’?
o We have no idea what we are up against (see cartoon)
2
, - Early 20th century
o Political legitimacy
o Scientific legitimacy
- Controversial concept inconsistently incorporating two notions:
o Provision of illegal goods and services: drugs, human trafficking, weapons…
o Criminal organisation: people organize themselves and pose a threat to society
- Temporal mismatch
o United States: peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s
o Europe: much later
- Past 9/11
o Lost some momentum but still high on the agenda!
2. History of the concept
2.1. The American roots
- Probably first used in the 1896 (annual report of the NY Society for the Prevention of
Crime)
o Protected gambling and prostitution
o Illegal business dealings involving politicians, police officers, lawyers, etc.
- 1920s and 1930s
o Development of illegal markets due to Prohibition → for example: alcohol was
forbidden so criminals saw an opportunity to start illegal businesses to sell
alcohol
o Serious efforts to define and discuss OC by both academics and commentators
o No specific reference to separate associations of gangsters (yet) → Al Capone
was a gangster, but not connected to an organisation
o Often synonymous with ‘racketeering’ (i.e. extortion, predatory activities and
provision of illegal goods and services such as illegal gambling, counterfeit
documents and trafficking in drugs and liquor)
▪ If you have a shop and a criminal says ‘you have a nice shop, I wouldn’t
want anything happen to it, pay me 1000 dollars a month and I will ensure
nothing happens’ → if you said no, your shop was destroyed (extortion)
- ‘The Gang’ (Thrasher, 1927)
o First full scale treatment of OC → first assessment of OC
o No hard structures
o Links with the upper world (police, judges, lawyers…)
o Indispensable functions played by certain specialized persons/groups including
doctors, lawyers, politicians, etc.
3
, - Between 1929 and 1931
o First federal government attempt to study OC (Wickersham Commission)
o ‘What’ = more important than ‘Who’ (i.e. based on criminal law categories, not on
criminals)
- After Second World War (1945)
o Wickersham approach (i.e. ‘understanding of OC as a set of criminal
entrepreneurial activities with the frequent involvement of legal businesses and
state representatives’) abandoned
o ‘Who’ = more important than ‘What’
o From late 1940s onward, focus on foreign career criminals constituting well-
structured and powerful criminal organisations representing a threat to the
integrity of American society and politics
▪ Society gets the crime they deserve (Laccassagne)
• Why do these organisations exist? Why is it so easy to recruit people?
Because they are living in poverty, in dangerous neighbourhood,
unemployment, most children
• Bv: Brussel-Zuid: cleaned up the station, but where do these people
go to? Another place and this is when they recruited others
→ Alien, parasitical corporation
- New organisation-based approach (alien conspiracy) clearly enunciated by Kefauver
Senate Investigation Committee (1950)
o Italian mafia-centred view of OC (La Cosa Nostra)
o Remained official standpoint for almost three decades !
▪ It is selection: some communities were being overpoliced → ofcourse
you find something, but what about the other communities?
o Need for increased federal involvement in enforcement of gambling and drug
laws
o Federal Narcotics Bureau (later DEA) as major ‘moral entrepreneur’ of
organisation-based understanding of OC
- 1963 (Joe Valachi)
o Testifies before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (Cosa
Nostra)
▪ Because he was terrified of someone in jail
▪ They asked him questions, but leading
questions! Not open questions → they wanted
to confirm what they thought = confirmation
bias
o Enormous public impact → from then on: italian mafia became a major threat to
society according to people
o Merger of the two concepts of OC and ‘mafia’ fully accomplished
4
Lecture 1: Concept & Definitions..............................................................................................2
Lecture 2: Research on organised crime: approaches & methods ............................................ 23
Lecture 3: Causes and facilitating factors of organised crime .................................................. 39
Lecture 4: Organized Crime Markets....................................................................................... 50
Lecture 5: Models of Organised Criminal Groups .................................................................... 78
Lecture 6: Organised crime policies ....................................................................................... 87
Lecture 7: The Crime-Terror Nexus ......................................................................................... 97
Lecture 8 ............................................................................................................................. 105
The Belgian synthetic drug market: social network analysis and financial crime scripting ....... 105
Forensic Intelligence, Organized Crime Networks & Disruption = how law enforcement better
disrupt networks ................................................................................................................. 111
Lecture 9: Administrative approach to organised crime: ARIEC Limburg ................................. 126
1
,Lecture 1: Concept & Definitions
1. Introduction
Main points:
1. Law enforcement is more than merely enforcing a rule/legal act.
o Phenomenon -> legislation -> enforcement?
• Police has to follow the rules, but they do more than enforcement
alone
• They have an impact on what politicians enact as law → they request
things, people,…
• This is the moment organized crime became a big thing → police
needed additional powers because we are up against an army of
criminals
▪ But what are we up against really? The big bad wolf? But how
many wolfs are there, what do they look like,…? We do not
know
▪ Bart de Wever: red pill (reference to ‘The Matrix’ = movie about
living in virtual reality) → if you take the blue pill, you see
things that you want to see, but it is not reality!
In Antwerp (thanks to De Wever) they started to take
the red pill → you see buildings being used as
synthetic drug labs, illegal dumpings poisoning
water,…
What government institution are criminals most
scared of? Tax administration!
2. The concept of organised crime is a social construct.
o Not a crime, but a criminal phenomenon.
• It is behavior that we agree is OC. Serious crime, at least punishable by
3 years of imprisonment
o Crimes vs. offenders.
3. Enforcement and policies difficult without a clear view on the problem: usefulness
of the concept ‘organised’?
o We have no idea what we are up against (see cartoon)
2
, - Early 20th century
o Political legitimacy
o Scientific legitimacy
- Controversial concept inconsistently incorporating two notions:
o Provision of illegal goods and services: drugs, human trafficking, weapons…
o Criminal organisation: people organize themselves and pose a threat to society
- Temporal mismatch
o United States: peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s
o Europe: much later
- Past 9/11
o Lost some momentum but still high on the agenda!
2. History of the concept
2.1. The American roots
- Probably first used in the 1896 (annual report of the NY Society for the Prevention of
Crime)
o Protected gambling and prostitution
o Illegal business dealings involving politicians, police officers, lawyers, etc.
- 1920s and 1930s
o Development of illegal markets due to Prohibition → for example: alcohol was
forbidden so criminals saw an opportunity to start illegal businesses to sell
alcohol
o Serious efforts to define and discuss OC by both academics and commentators
o No specific reference to separate associations of gangsters (yet) → Al Capone
was a gangster, but not connected to an organisation
o Often synonymous with ‘racketeering’ (i.e. extortion, predatory activities and
provision of illegal goods and services such as illegal gambling, counterfeit
documents and trafficking in drugs and liquor)
▪ If you have a shop and a criminal says ‘you have a nice shop, I wouldn’t
want anything happen to it, pay me 1000 dollars a month and I will ensure
nothing happens’ → if you said no, your shop was destroyed (extortion)
- ‘The Gang’ (Thrasher, 1927)
o First full scale treatment of OC → first assessment of OC
o No hard structures
o Links with the upper world (police, judges, lawyers…)
o Indispensable functions played by certain specialized persons/groups including
doctors, lawyers, politicians, etc.
3
, - Between 1929 and 1931
o First federal government attempt to study OC (Wickersham Commission)
o ‘What’ = more important than ‘Who’ (i.e. based on criminal law categories, not on
criminals)
- After Second World War (1945)
o Wickersham approach (i.e. ‘understanding of OC as a set of criminal
entrepreneurial activities with the frequent involvement of legal businesses and
state representatives’) abandoned
o ‘Who’ = more important than ‘What’
o From late 1940s onward, focus on foreign career criminals constituting well-
structured and powerful criminal organisations representing a threat to the
integrity of American society and politics
▪ Society gets the crime they deserve (Laccassagne)
• Why do these organisations exist? Why is it so easy to recruit people?
Because they are living in poverty, in dangerous neighbourhood,
unemployment, most children
• Bv: Brussel-Zuid: cleaned up the station, but where do these people
go to? Another place and this is when they recruited others
→ Alien, parasitical corporation
- New organisation-based approach (alien conspiracy) clearly enunciated by Kefauver
Senate Investigation Committee (1950)
o Italian mafia-centred view of OC (La Cosa Nostra)
o Remained official standpoint for almost three decades !
▪ It is selection: some communities were being overpoliced → ofcourse
you find something, but what about the other communities?
o Need for increased federal involvement in enforcement of gambling and drug
laws
o Federal Narcotics Bureau (later DEA) as major ‘moral entrepreneur’ of
organisation-based understanding of OC
- 1963 (Joe Valachi)
o Testifies before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (Cosa
Nostra)
▪ Because he was terrified of someone in jail
▪ They asked him questions, but leading
questions! Not open questions → they wanted
to confirm what they thought = confirmation
bias
o Enormous public impact → from then on: italian mafia became a major threat to
society according to people
o Merger of the two concepts of OC and ‘mafia’ fully accomplished
4
