The structure and activities of Organised Crime Groups

Researching Organised crime: Problems

• Lack of definitional consensus

• Organised crime is a social construction

  • “Organized crime … is a political construct that serves a particular set of functions for the state…” (p.99) “… rendering the researcher vulnerable to shifts in politically motivated renditions of a constantly shifting cluster of often disparate activities” (p. 96) Hobbs and Antonopoulis (2012

• Hidden nature and complexity of OC

  • Success depends on protection from detection (and prosecution)

  • Multifaceted nature, consisting of complex collaborative relationships

  • What incentive is there for perps (or victims) of OC to participate in research?

Critical Review: Types of organised crime research

• See Von Lampe (2015) Chapter 3

  • History of research into organised crime

  • Dominance of interest in OC of Italian-American origin

  • Most contemporary research remains descriptive

  • Difficulties in accessing meaningful data

• Hobbs and Antonopoulis (2012)

  • Official data

  • Quantitative / economic analysis

  • Historical / archival studies

  • Ethnography

  • Interviews

• How is organised crime policy, legislation and policing practice formed?

  • “Most organized crime policies have been implemented without the “impediment” of empirical research…” Hobbs and Antonopoulis (2012: 97)

The needs of organised crime

• “’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) – Palermo Convention

• “Serious crime should be understood in terms of interlocking networks which are metaphors for relationality, … expressed as amalgams of family, neighbourhood, region and nationality, and which merge with purely instrumental commercial coalitions.” Hobbs (2013: 103, drawing on the work of Strathern, 1995: 179)

  
  

The needs of organised crime groups (Best and luckenbill, 1994)

• Access to resources to enable crime

• Ideology to justify criminal behaviour

• Social status (in the underworld and beyond)

• Security from prosecution

• Security from other criminals

Network ties

• Criminally exploitable ties

• Building criminal social capital

• Lots of work on criminal networks — i.e. Cockbain (2018) on offender and victim networks in human trafficking

• The nature of criminal relationships:

  • Criminal Dispositions (Desire)

  • Trust

Trust

Based on:

1. Levels of rationality around trust (Can I trust this person / spectrum of trust?)

2. Point of reference of trust (how do I know this person)

• Family ties

• Local communities / ethic (religious) ties

• Business relationships

The structure of OC: How ‘organised’ is organised crime

• Levi et al. (2013) There are at least two ways of defining ‘organised crime’… The first is to focus on Mafia-type associations – the image that most graphically captures what many people think of when they use the term.

• The second is a looser set of networks with far less stability or hierarchy whose participants supply markets with illicit goods and services: this represents the reality of ‘organised crime’…”

  
  

Classifying OC: Structural properties

Framework of analysis - Cohen (1977:99):

• Structures of activity: types of activities engaged in or types of crime delivered through OC networks.

• Structures of association: ‘ the hierarchy, centralization, discipline, unity and power of groups’.

• “Criminal Structure” – “an arrangement of relationships between criminals that have an impact – directly or indirectly – on the commission of crime” (Von Lampe, 2015: Chapter 5)

Common Examples of OC structures

YAKUZA

Mafia: criminal syndicates example

• Sicilian Mafia — Cosa Nostra

• ‘Ndrangheta

• Camorra

Models of OC structures (Von Lampe, 2015)

Three main types and their key purposes

1. Enterprise / entrepreneurial: material gain (Economic)

2. Associational: status, support, ideology (Social)

3. Quasi-governmental: protection/ material gain (Political / Power)

Entrepreneurial: UK drug gangs

• Mixed group of people, with different roles/skills enabling successful commission of crime

• Focus on material gain / profit

• Can be for market-based and/or predatory crimes

• E.g. Newport, South Wales – December 2015

• Lots of examples online….

Associational: Outlaw motor cycle gangs

• Coherent structure, some degree of formalisation, often conditions as to membership (Von Lampe, 2015)

• E.g. Hells Angels and other similar gangs

• Select membership, often from select demographic

• Codes of conduct

• Club insignia and tattoos

• Probation period

• Are they really an OC gang though?

  
  

Australian motorcycle gangs (Bright et al, 2024) (Group members)

• Office bearer: A member of an OMCG club/chapter who occupies an executive role (e.g., president, vice-present, sergeant-at-arms).

• Member: A current fully patched member of a club/chapter who is not in an office bearing role.

• Nominee: Someone who is undertaking a period as nominee, seeking full membership of the club.

• Associate: An individual who is an associate of a club/chapter but not a nominee or member. These individuals may be seeking to undertake a period as nominee.

Quasi governmental: Cosa Nostra Fmily

• Enable certain criminals to control other criminals who operate in a particular illegal market or geographical location (Von Lampe, 2015; Chapter 8)

• Regulate behaviour, protect contractual and property rights, protect members (against other criminals and law enforcement), resolve disputes, and ‘tax’ income

• May go beyond criminal regulation

• Cosa Nostra – higher commission regulating families and members, seek permission from higher up hierarchy before committing crimes, and pay percentage of profits to those above them

Key questions about when a gang/group is really ‘organised crime’?

• Decker et al. (2004: 247)

• “Are gangs disorganised aggregations of predatory individuals that commit a number of crimes, or do they purposively engage in crimes motivated and organised by the gang according to formal-rational criteria?”

• Structure and command

• Group motivation and group identity
  (Also refer to later session on British Organised Crime)

  
  

Models / classifications of organised crime activities

There is a spectrum of organisation of criminal activities:

• McIntosh (1975) focuses on the criminal act – craft crimes, project crimes, and continuing criminal enterprises

• Albini (1971) focuses on pursued goals – political-social, mercenary/predatory, in-group-orientated and syndicated

• Naylor (2003) focuses on economic effects – predatory, market-
  based and commercial

• Von Lampe (2015) focuses on underlying relationships – market-
  based, predatory and illegal governance crimes

  
  

Predatory

• Direct victims — the criminal obtains a benefit at the expense of some else (Von Lampe, 2015)

• Involuntary transfer of wealth (e.g. theft, robbery, fraud, extortion, etc.)

• Use of violence, abuse and murder

• Hostile environment, at greater risk of reports to law enforcement

• But depends upon context

Market-based crimes

• “… pertaining to the provision of illegal goods and services… characterized by cooperative relationships, typically between suppliers and customers, respectively sellers and buyers.” Von Lampe, 2015: Chapter 4).

• In exchange for money or other goods or services of value (often difficult to obtain, illegal or illegally obtained)

• Voluntary transaction, of mutual benefit to both sides

• Policing – more hidden, less likely to reach law enforcement, policing needs to be more proactive

Typologies of illegal markets

Von Lampe (2015) value of classifying illegal markets in enhancing our understanding of OC:

• Illegal market “an arena for the regular voluntary exchange of goods and services for money where the goods and services themselves, their production, selling, and/or consumption violates the law” (Von Lampe, 2015: chapter 4)

2 types: markets for goods and services

1. That are prohibited without any exceptions – there are no legal markets for them

2. Are regulated to some extent – might be restricted who can buy and sell, under what circumstances, or subject to taxes etc.

Von Lampe’s (2015) Typology of illegal markets

Illegal governance crimes … Von Lampe. p.76

• Power Syndicates that mirror what government does

• Regulation of behaviours

• Resolution of conflict

• Underworld policing

• Use of force / Violence

Some considerations: Present dat real life OC

• “… the entrepreneurial culture that is at the heart of our notion of contemporary organized crime as an unremarkable characteristic of contemporary urban life, embedded in the mundane and hedonistic chaos of the city, and located specifically in the fractured rhythms of illegal trading that underpin the pain and pleasure of our increasingly fragmented urban existence.” (Hobbs, 2013: 3)

  • Move to market based, entrepreneurial, and money laundering crimes

  • Cyber networks

  • Transnational (and even global) complex OC networks

    
    

Summary

• Organised crime is hard to research;

• In order to survive, organised crime has a number of ‘needs’ (ecosystems to support) (more on this in the session 6 on embeddedness);

• There are clear structures of organised crime;

• Activities and ‘models’ can be identified.