Samenvatting Georganiseerde Criminaliteit (Selected Issues: Organised Crime UGent)

SAMENVATTING ORGANISED CRIME
POSSIBLE QUESTIONS MANDATORY READER-TEXTS:
- What are the three main messages about the text?

In 3 lessen zijn er teksten die je wel moet lezen en studeren!  staat onder core reading

Examen
- 1 kennisvraag: nummer tussen 1 en 31 en krijg je een vraag
- andere vraag: letter tussen A en G en dat verwijst naar de verplichte teksten uit de reader
o What are the 3 messages: what do you know about the text – what have you learned
from reading the text (keywords) – how/what/who… - help him find out if you
understand what you have read

LECTURE 1: Concept and Definitions
1. Introduction
Main points:
• (1) Law enforcement is more than merely enforcing a rule/legal act. It is also about
influence policy and influencing legislation!
o Phenomenon -> legislation -> enforcement?
o Law enforcement also has an influence on making legislation.
o You have a phenomenon that you see, people want to do sth. about it. So, they develop
legislation and need someone to enforce that legislation. But in reality, this is difficult:
discussions between police and legislators.
• (2) The concept of organised crime is a social construct.
o Not a crime, but a criminal phenomenon.
o Crimes vs. offenders: are we talking about crimes or about the (individual) offenders?
 You should also take a look on the nature of a specific crime.
 In the end we talk about: serious AND organized crime.
o Social construct: which means that it has been created by men.
• (3) Enforcement and policies difficult without a clear view on the problem: usefulness of
the concept ‘organised’?

Quote: “We have testimony that you walk like a duck, and you quack like a duck. Tell the court –are
you a duck?”  PEOPLE TEND TO THINK IT IS ORGANISAD CRIME BCS WE DO HAVE A NOTION ABOUT
ORGANISED CRIME.

Early 20th century
• Political legitimacy
• Scientific legitimacy

Controversial concept inconsistently incorporating two notions:
• 1. Provision of illegal goods and services
• 2. Criminal organisation
o State capture: f.e. Latin-America  different groups that want to have power of the
state and then turn the legislation etc. on their behalf (f.e. Escobar)
o Learned from the Italian mafia: parallel society between the legal and illegal.
 = a criminal organisation could also be threatening to the legal economy.




1

,There is also a temporal mismatch:
• United States: peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s
• Europe: much later
o Even in Belgium we’ve developed anti-terrorist policies etc.

Past 9/11
• Lost some momentum (in Belgium as well) but still high on the agenda!
o Last report-dates we’re from 2009
o But drugs markets are expanding in Belgium, we see synthetic drug labs…

2. History of the concept
2.1. The American roots
1896
• The term OC  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.

1920-1930
• 1920s and 1930s
o Development of illegal markets due to Prohibition
o Serious efforts to define and discuss OC by both academics and commentators.
o No specific reference to separate associations of gangsters (yet)
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)
• ‘The Gang’ (Thrasher, 1927)
o The first full scale treatment of OC is “the Gang”.
o No hard structures
o Links with the upper world
o Indispensable functions played by certain specialized persons/groups including doctors,
lawyers, politicians, etc.

1920-30/1945
• Between 1929 and 1931
o First federal government attempt to study OC (the Wickersham Commission)
o ‘What’ = more important than ‘Who’ (i.e., based on criminal law categories, not on
criminals)
 “What kind of crimes are being committed that we need to do sth. about it” >>>
“who is committing it?”
• But things change… because of an influx of migrants (+survival economy)
o (mostly) Illegal ports, constructions (like Portuguese labours) and waste management
 *Waste management – there is always going to be waste and where you dump it
does not matter.
• After Second World War
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’



2

, 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.
 Alien, parasitical corporation to destroy the United States

1950-1960
• New organisation-based approach (alien conspiracy: connecting criminal activities to the
ethnicity of people -> f.e. ‘Mocro-maffia’) clearly enunciated by Kefauver Senate
Investigation Committee (1950)
o Italian mafia-centred view of OC (La Cosa Nostra)
 La Cosa Nostra
 This Italian mafia-centred view of OC remained the official standpoint for almost
three decades!
o So, there was a 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
• TURNING POINT: the (public) testimony of Joe Valachi in 1963
o Valachi testifies before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (Cosa
Nostra)  it was televised…
 This had an enormous public impact: first time a member of La Cosa Nostra on
television who confirms/admits everything in order to be granted immunity and
protection.
o Merger of the two concepts of OC and ‘mafia’ fully accomplished
• 1950s and 1960s
o Consolidation of the mafia-centred concept of OC
o The focus on NY City  but how ‘true’ and ‘general’ was this picture?
o Proposal to specifically outlaw membership of La Cosa Nostra was rejected.
o Uneasiness with mafia paradigm demonstrated by many law-enforcement officials at
state and local levels + members of Federal Organised Crime Strike Forces, established
late 1960s and early 1970s.
 They did not really believed that OC was only connected to Italians. They did see
others as well.

1970
• 1970 (RICO Act US Senate)
o Racketeer Influenced and Corrupted Organisations Act
o Definition of OC in much broader terms than Cosa Nostra only to include less
structured gangs and illicit enterprises.

However, ….
• Myth of powerful and centralized mafia organisation long continued to be claimed whenever
police budgets had to be raised or new legislation had to be passed.
• New legislation  increased power (e.g., wiretapping and eavesdropping, informants, seizing
financial assets, …)
And …
• Public perception dominated by mafia-centred view on OC

2.2. The rise of the illegal enterprise paradigm
Past 1960s/1970-1980
• Idea of alien conspiracy rejected by most American social scientists

3

, o Ideological
o Serving personal political interests
o Lacking in accuracy and empirical evidence
• Scientific attention shifted from ‘Who’ back to ‘ What’
• Focus on the supply of illegal products and services
o Focus on the marketplace  rise of the expression ‘illicit’ or ‘illegal enterprise’
o The purpose of organized crime is to financially profit through crime and mainly
responds to public demand for services.

1970-1980
• Beginning the of 1970s: the war on drugs.
o We are still facing the legacy of the War on Drugs
 We do not have a war on drugs in Antwerp.
o Instead of Maffia-> illegal enterprise -> also see RICO Act
• Fighting drugs in the US, while drugs are pouring in from abroad?
• Export of the concept of organised crime as an instrument to increase international
cooperation in the fight against drugs and to transfer law enforcement techniques to other
countries.  every country needs to fight against drugs
o Ethan Nadelman (1994); Peter Luspha (1981)
o Law enforcement problems concerning drugs: case of François (Belgium), but also the
Netherlands (IRT).
 François – head of the newly established anti-drugs gendarmery in Belgium -> “if you
want to be effective and disrupt the French: you need to focus on heroin and not on
cocaine. We are going to use unorthodox means” (he tried to infiltrate and make a
deal, took out confiscated drugs and gave it back to the informant – the informant
took off with the drugs and left fake drugs behind -> so basically, they tricked him.
François reacted: sold drugs himself and with that money he bought new drugs and
replaced that one that he took in the vault)
 IRT – InterRegionalTeam
 This led to the establishment of the commission van Traa + adoption of
drug policies (like BOM-policy etc.)

1980
• Side-effect of OC as a synonym for illegal enterprise!
o Term ‘OC’ used to refer to both
 1. sets of people involved in illegal activities (e.g. Cosa Nostra) and
 2. the sets of activities in itself.
o Thus: confusion between offender and offence, leading to circular reasoning (in which
we think okay we need to obey)
 Confusing on what we need to focus
• As from the early 1980s, host of other organised crime entities listed next to La Cosa Nostra,
such as:
o Outlaw motorcycle and prison gangs
o Colombian cartels
o The Japanese Yakuza
o Eastern European OC groups
o ...

1990s onwards
• OC disappeared from US policy agenda during the 1990s
• Interest resurged since 2008


4