Organised crime

The evolution and history of organised crime

  • Term first used in late 19th century: prostitution and gambling cartels

  • Thrasher ‘the gang‘ - 1927 / The Chicago crime Commission (1919)

  • American historical perspectives

  • The ‘Golden Triangle’

  • European perspectives

See Fijnaut (2014)

  • Mafia domination

  • ‘the mafias single most important activity was to ensure selective access to key resources, in a context where the state was unable to offer fair and universal rules’. Varese (2011:p102)

Emergence as an academic policy area of concern

  • Globalisation processes

  • Italian mafia and Concerns over the ‘East‘ : collapse of USSR

  • Opening of national borders / Schengen Agreement, 1985

  • Loss of sovereignty

  • Political concerns

  • ‘Deviant other’ / population flows

Defining organised crime

The problem of definition

  • ‘Organised crime .. a vague umbrella concept’ (Paoli and Vander Beken, 2014:13)

  • Much organised crime is mundane and hard to distinguish from other forms of crime

  • Alternative definitions: both academic and policy based available (ie. EU definition, see Von Lamp, 2016)

  • UK Serious Crime Act 2015 (Part 3; section 45): Offence of participating in activities of organised crime group (Up to 5 years in prison)

  • Disconnect between ‘social reality’ and ‘concept’ or ‘predetermined notions’

  • There is more focus on the ‘powerless’; ‘marginalised’ and ‘immigrants’ rather than the wealthy (i.e. social constructions of deviance)

What is OC? Palermo UN Convention (2000)

“Organized criminal group” shall mean a structured group of three or more persons, existing for a period of time and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offences established in accordance with this Convention, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit.

United Nations (2000:5)

Interpol (2025)

‘organized criminal networks are involved in many different types of criminal
activities spanning several countries…’.


‘….criminal enterprises closely resemble those of legitimate international
businesses. They have operating models, long-term strategies, hierarchies,
and even strategic alliances, all serving the same purpose: to generate the
most profits with the least amount of risk’.

National Crime Agency (2020:2)

‘Serious and organised crime is defined in the 2018 Serious and Organised Crime Strategy as individuals planning, coordinating and committing serious offences, whether individually, in groups and/or as part of transnational networks’.

Scale and forms of organised crime

Oc and the UK landscape: Scale of organised crime

Various threat assessments have estimated:

  • Around 4,772 organised crime groups

  • Around 9% of 10-15 year olds claim to know a gang member (2013/14);

  • Concentrated in major urban areas (county lines?);

  • Economic costs of £37 billion per year;

  • £1billion is laundered per year

Global initiative against transnational organised crime: organised crime index

  • Provides a country by country measure of organised crime

  • Based on a score out of 10 of criminality and resilience

  1. Criminality score

(a) Criminal markets (i.e drugs trade / human trafficking);

(b) Criminal actors (i.e. types of criminality present)

  1. Resilience (i.e. political leadership; laws; judicial system).

Key threats / enablers of Organised Crime (or ecosystems of OC)

  • Technology - the dark web

  • Borders

  • Corruption - of officials / passport of control

  • Financial flows

(National Crime Agency, 2021)

New forms of organised crime and globalisation

  • Transit crime

  • Cybercrime

  • New methods

  • New opportunities

  • Changes in ‘space‘, ‘time‘ and ‘flows’ of people/ capital (local to global)

  • New ‘criminogenic asymmetries’ (Von Lampe, 2016: 293) allow for transitional organised crime

Global cocaine flows (Boekhout van Solinge, 2022)

  • Routes to Europe due to tenfold increase in price in Europe for traffickers for cocaine compared to markers in global south.

  • North Africa (Morocco) and Mediterranean are now key hubs due to:

  1. Ease of access to Europe 

  2. Historical trade routes

  3. Proximity to shipping routes

  4. Connections between North Africa and Colombian crime groups 

  5. Dutch, Belgian OCG control of North Africa ports

  6. Emergence of narco-submarines

Transplantation of Organised Crime (how it shifts spatially)

Mafias on the move (Varese, 2011)

Supply of mafiosi

  • Generalised migration 

  • Mafiosi migration

Local demand for services

  • Level of trust / civic engagement 

  • Presence of local illegal protectors 

  • Size of locale 

  • New and/or booming markets 

Summary

  • Organised crime is embedded in many historical accounts of crime 

  • Development of subject in academic and policy circles is relatively recent 

  • Problem of definition: ‘Definition‘ v ‘Descriptions’ (Von Lampe, 2016:27)

  • Problem of ‘scale’ / size and nature of the problem (i.e. OC Index exercise)

  • New opportunities, globalisation