Progression from Cafeteria to à la carte Offending: Scottish Organised Crime Narratives
| Author | ROBERT McLEAN,JAMES DENSLEY,ROSS DEUCHAR,SIMON HARDING |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12304 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
The Howard Journal Vol58 No 2. June 2019 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12304
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 161–179
Progression from Cafeteria to `
ala
carte Offending: Scottish Organised
Crime Narratives
JAMES DENSLEY , ROBERT McLEAN, ROSS DEUCHAR
and SIMON HARDING
James Densley is Associate Professor, School of Law Enforcement and Criminal
Justice, Metropolitan State University, Brooklyn Park, MN, USA; Robert
McLean is Lecturer, Department of Social Sciences, Northumbria University;
Ross Deuchar is Professor, Interdisciplinary Research Unit on Crime, Policing
and Social Justice, School of Education, University of the West of Scotland;
Simon Harding is Associate Professor, Research Centre for Cybercrime and
Security, University of West London
Abstract: This article presents insights from qualitative research into organised crime
(OC) in Glasgow, Scotland. Interviews were conducted with a sample of 42 current and
former offenders with a history of group offending in an attempt to understand variation
in the onset, maintenance, and cessation of OC careers. Offending narratives revealed
different OC trajectories. Drug dealing was the primary modus operandi of OC groups,
but some offenders exhibited versatility and progression to wider criminal activity or a mix
of illegitimate activity and legitimate business. Implications for future policing strategies
and suggested additional research are outlined in response to these findings.
Keywords: criminal capital; drug dealing; narratives; organised crime;
Scotland
Organised crime (OC) is part of everyday life in many of Scotland’s
communities, concluded a recent report commissioned by the Scottish
Government (Fraser et al. 2018). Based on interviews with practitioners
and community stakeholders, the study found diversification in criminal
activity within territorially-defined communities and said that poverty and
inequality were its key drivers. The government’s report thus filled a gap
in knowledge relating to the broader community experiences of organised
crime in Scotland. Absent from the report, however, were the voices of
the offenders embedded within organised criminal networks, and actively
engaged in OC. No one asked them what they did and how ‘organised’
their criminal activities really were.
161
C
2018 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
The Howard Journal Vol58 No 2. June 2019
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 161–179
The current study aims to move beyond the prevailing perceptions
of police, practitioners, and community service providers, and, instead,
engage with the voices of the offenders themselves. In so doing, we
present narratives of OC, analysed in a life-course perspective (Farring-
ton 2003), that reveal pathways from amateur general practice to pro-
fessional specialty in crime. Narratives have always been central to crim-
inology (for example, Shaw 1930; Sykes and Matza 1957), but in recent
years a truly narrative criminology has been characterised as an ‘emer-
gent paradigm’ (Presser 2009, p.178). Based on multiple qualitative in-
terviews with 42 organised criminals based in Glasgow, the current study
provides information regarding the lived experience of OC in Scotland,
including its origins in unstructured street gang offending, thus identify-
ing gaps in knowledge and offering suggestions for future research and
policy.
Literature Review
How Crime is Organised
Organised crime is a broad, and at times ambiguous, concept (Von Lampe
2016), but in recent years scholars have settled on a definition of OC as
a productive activity, involving the provision of illicit goods and services
(Varese 2010). OC produces and trades illegal drugs, for example. Another
aspect of OC is the regulation of illicit production and exchange. In this
view, OC attempts to regulate and control the production and distribu-
tion of a given commodity or service unlawfully (Varese2010). The supply
of private protection is one example (Gambetta 1993; Nozick 1974; Tilly
1985), whereby OC seeks to bring order to the underworld (Schelling
1971). In the United Kingdom, Campana and Varese (2018) found that
most OC activities were conducted in the absence of governance-type OC,
but illegal governance did still exist; a finding consistent with other stud-
ies in high-crime areas in Britain, including London (Densley 2013) and
Glasgow (McLean et al. 2018).
Research on OC, for obvious reasons, overlaps with research on group
offending, a subject in which criminologists have long been interested
(Shaw and McKay 1931). Debates focus on the convergence and divergence
of ‘gangs’ and OC, namely the threshold level of organisation needed for
gangs to become OC and what criminal activity should be included in the
definition (see Bouchard and Spindler 2010). Research indicates that gang
organisation exists on a continuum (Densley 2014), with ‘instrumental-
rational’ (organised) groups at one extreme, and ‘informal-diffuse’ (disor-
ganised) groups at the other (Decker, Bynum and Weisel 1998; Decker,
Katz and Webb 2008). For this reason, organisational structure is largely a
descriptor rather than a definer of gangs and OC, provided a group satisfies
a minimal threshold of members and maintains a collective identity (Klein
and Maxson 2006). Also, for this reason, some more organised gangs con-
stitute OC groups (Decker and Pyrooz 2013; Densley 2012a) – the two
categories are not mutually exclusive. Scholars, in turn, have emphasised
the idea of ‘disorganised’ crime (Hobbs 2001; Reuter 1983; Ruggiero and
162
C
2018 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
To continue reading
Request your trial