Researching the organization of serious crimes
| Date | 01 November 2008 |
| Published date | 01 November 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895808097403 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
© 2008 SAGE Publications
(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)
and the British Society of Criminology.
www.sagepublications.com
ISSN 1748–8958; Vol: 8(4): 363–388
DOI: 10.1177/1748895808097403
Researching the organization
of serious crimes
A D A M E D WA R D S A N D M I C H A E L L E V I
University of Cardiff, UK
Abstract
In a sense, the problem of organized crime is the concept of
‘organized crime’ itself. The implications of shifting the analytical
focus from explanations of ‘it’ toward building theories of the
organization of serious crimes are considered in relation to three
ways of framing research: organized crime as an external threat; the
organization of serious crimes through routine activities; and their
organization through social relations. Beyond taxonomic
assessments of various threats, organized crime groups, their
regional theatres of operation and involvement in illicit markets,
a major fault-line exists within social scientific studies of the
organization of serious crimes over the appropriate scope of inquiry.
Specifically, whether this should be limited to the particular settings
in which discrete serious crime events occur and/or broadened to
encompass the social structural antecedents of these events. This
boils down to an argument over what constitutes the necessary
relations for the commission of serious crimes for economic gain,
and how their contingent concentration in certain places and
moments amongst particular populations can be adequately
explained. This also suggests that the interplay between more
remote ‘distal’ causes, situational opportunities presented by public
and private sector controls, and pre-existing networks of
relationships have to be understood in combination for an
adequate explanatory account of the organization of crimes.
Key Words
Crime networks and opportunities • criminal organisation • drug
trafficking • Europol • illicit Markets • necessary and contingent
relations for crime • organized crime • Serious Organised Crime
Agency • threat assessment
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Criminology & Criminal Justice 8(4)
Introduction
During the past decade, within the EU generally and the UK in particular,
there has been a growing stress placed by governments and by some parts
of the police upon the threat posed by ‘organized crime’. However, the
nature of this threat—the underlying phenomenon—has remained elusive.
Is it truly a political threat, in the sense that a significant part of the econ-
omy and/or the polity risks being taken over by current active criminals or
people acting in their interests? Is it a threat to the state’s monopoly of the
use of violence?1 As a justificatory concept for extra policing (including
non-police) powers and resources, it has been successful—conjuring forth
an image of Men in Dark Glasses and Guns—but in a sense, the problem of
organized crime is the concept of ‘organized crime’ itself. Official concep-
tions of this problem have been preoccupied with asking if ‘it’ has been
organized in particular ways that pose external threats to otherwise ‘licit’
political-economies. Not long after its formulation, the hierarchical model
of criminal organization (Cressey, 1969) was accused of imposing a spe-
cious conceptual order on a diverse and analytically distinct range of actors,
activities and harmful consequences. To better recognize these, the ‘problem
of organized crime’ has been reformulated to ask, instead, how different
crimes of a serious impact and magnitude are organized, and what overlaps
exist between the offences and those who commit them (Levi, 2007).
Terminology found in the ‘organized crime’ literature is often ambigu-
ous: that is both its political strength (for producing consensus around
increased resources, domestic powers and international co-operation) and
its analytical weakness. Despite the constant use of the term ‘organized
crime’ in media, political and policing spheres around the globe, the over-
whelming consensus within the criminological literature and among con-
temporary police (e.g. OCTA, 2007; SOCA, 2008) is that networks are very
important and are more appropriately refined than ‘organized crime’ as a
dynamic depiction of how criminals operate. On inspection, however, it
appears that there are at least three common uses of this term (Dorn et al.,
2005: 9—variations from which are in square brackets):
(1) As a way of describing the structure and/or everyday workings of the mar-
ket as a whole, in the sense that the market can be regarded as a complex
social network (singular noun), within which different participants have to
network (verb) (to carefully seek out and interact with traffickers who may
be like or unlike themselves, etc.: see for example Coles, 2001, Pearson and
Hobbs, 2001). In other words, through networking, traffickers [and other
offenders] construct the market.
(2) As a way of describing drug markets as made up of independent small
groups or individuals, sometimes called ‘disorganized crime’, sometimes
simply ‘networks’ (plural). Doubt is cast upon the existence of larger
and/or ‘harder’ criminal organizations operating in the UK or other
European contexts [outside of Italy], partly because it is posited that law
Edwards & Levi—Researching the organization of serious crimes
365
enforcement agencies break up larger groups…. In other words, in European
drug trafficking [and many other offences], ‘small is beautiful’
(3) As a way of referring to the durability or otherwise of criminals’ organiza-
tional and other arrangements, when these are seen as ever-changing….In
other words, impermanence is the name of the game. (This approach often
co-exists with number (2) earlier, although they are analytically separable.)
In that review of upper level drugs trafficking literature, we opted for the
first meaning—networking within the market—because the research best
supports it. However ‘networking’ is a term applicable equally to all traf-
fickers (and most co-offenders), not a type in itself, and reflects increased
mixing between hitherto different traffickers, leading to the breakdown of
linguistic, national and cultural barriers between them. This does not mean
there are no risks for them in dealing with other cultural groups and with
strangers, or that people routinely propose joint involvement in serious
crime to people they do not know well: to that extent there are barriers to
finding co-offenders, stimulated by fear of undercover policing. But for all
the casual discourse about the globalization of organized crime (and ter-
rorism)—see for a relatively sophisticated popular text, Glenny (2008)—
comparatively little is known about the barriers to successful integration of
criminals within and across national borders (Dorn et al., 2005; Matrix,
2007), nor to what extent and via which mechanisms these have been
changing over time. Though this may be in part an artefact of its dataset,
the Matrix (2007) study of imprisoned drugs traffickers suggests they were
less subtle and complex in their internationalization and money laundering
behaviour than universal police statements about ‘organized crime becom-
ing increasingly sophisticated’ would lead us to suspect. This is reflected
also in European and North American studies of laundering by convicted
drugs traffickers (van Duyne and Levi, 2005; Levi and Reuter, 2008),
though not that by serious fraudsters.
In this article we consider the implications for research that follow from
alterations in analytical focus. We contrast the conventional concern with
the threats posed by organized crime actors—whether they be hierarchically
structured ‘groups’ or, as recognized in more recent threat assessments,
looser networks of criminal associates—with two other ways of ‘framing’2
research that are prevalent in social scientific study: routine activities and
social relations (Levi, 1998; Edwards and Gill, 2003; Levi and Maguire,
2004; Edwards, 2005; Levi, 2007).
The implications of these three frames of reference are discussed in terms
of the distinction between ‘extensive’ and ‘intensive’ research strategies
(Harre, 1979; Sayer, 1994: 242–51); and their application to research on
the organization of serious crimes is summarized in Table 1. Extensive and
intensive strategies pose different kinds of question aimed at producing dif-
ferent kinds of account, employing alternative methods of investigation,
each entailing certain limitations. Extensive strategies are concerned with
empirical patterns of regularity and the distinguishing characteristics of a
366
Criminology & Criminal Justice 8(4)
d
us
t)
al
rch; case
esea
social antecedents
chival r
historical/ar
-predicting the incidence and
ertain times and places. Allied problem
f over
Social relations
Intensive.
What causes the organization of serio
crimes in specific societies?
What tendencies alter this organization
over time and in different places?
Substantial (necessary and contingen
relations of connection.
Causal groups interacting in social
contexts.
Structural analysis of the
of serious crimes in particular places an
moments.
Ethnography; abstract research (conceptual
analysis);
studies.
Problem of reductionism in historic
accounts specifying causal structures in
the organization of serious crimes (e.g.,
‘modernization’) but not the contingency
of their apprehension by particular actors
in c
o
s/
n
atter
qualitative
veys;
.a
serious crime p
ny definite context.
axonomic patterns/causal groups
Routine activities
Extensive/Intensive
What are the...
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