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1 Organized Crime: A Contested Concept

Letizia Paoli is Professor of Criminology at the University of Leuven Faculty of Law. Her research interests are primarily in organized crime, drugs, doping and related control policies as well as the assessment of the harms of crime.

Tom Vander Beken is Professor of law and criminology at Ghent University (Belgium). His research interests are in organised crime, criminal policy and criminal justice related issues.

Published: 16 December 2013
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This article examines the main shifts in meanings, territorial scope, and scientific and political legitimacy of the concept organized crime. It reconstructs the historical trajectory of the concept, starting in the United States where it was used almost exclusively until the 1970s and then following its rapid spread in Europe since the late 1980s. One of the main arguments of the essay is that the understanding of organized crime has shifted back and forth between two rival notions: (1) a set of stable organizations illegal per se or whose members systematically engage in crime, and (2) a set of serious criminal activities mostly carried out for monetary gain. The article also considers the growing emphasis placed on the transnational nature of organized crime from the early 1990s onwards and finally discusses the future of the concept of organized crime, drawing from its incipient decline in Europe and the recent interest in the topic in Asia and Oceania.

The concept of organized crime has had a winding history, with many partially contradictory meanings attached to it since the expression began to be used in the United States more than a hundred years ago. 1 Throughout this span of time, the term organized crime has had moments of veritable policy success—from the 1950s to the early 1970s in the United States and during the 1990s in Europe—as it has been used to indicate different criminal phenomena regarded as serious social problems. Whereas the term organized crime still has strong evocative power, which undoubtedly explains its political success, the many different criminal actors and activities that have been subsumed under this label make it a vague umbrella concept that cannot be used, without specification, as a basis for empirical analyses, theory-building, or policymaking.

The essay proceeds as follows. In section I of this chapter, we single out the main shifts in meanings, territorial scope and scientific and political legitimacy of the concept organized crime . With sections II , III , and IV , we reconstruct its historical trajectory, starting in the United States where it was used almost exclusively until the 1970s and then following its rapid spread in Europe since the late 1980s. In section V , we consider the growing emphasis placed on the transnational nature of organized crime from the early 1990s onward, particularly by the United Nations (UN). In the last section, we discuss the future of the concept of organized crime, drawing from its incipient decline in Europe and the recent interest in the topic in Asia and Oceania.

I. The Shifts in Meanings, Territorial Scope, and Legitimacy

The meanings of organized crime have changed considerably and repeatedly over time: according to Levi, this expression is now like a psychiatrist’s Rorschach blot, whose “attraction as well as…weakness is that one can read almost anything into it” (2002, p. 887; see also von Lampe 2001 ; Finckenauer 2005 ; and Varese 2010 ). Basically, the understanding of organized crime has shifted back and forth between two rival notions: (1) a set of stable organizations illegal per se or whose members systematically engage in crime, and (2) a set of serious criminal activities mostly carried out for monetary gain. Depending on time and place, some authors as well as national and international policy and law enforcement agencies have emphasized the “Who,” that is, the individual offenders and their variable partnerships, whereas others have given more relevance to the “What,” that is, the criminal activities conducted. The “Who” and “What” distinction goes back to Smith (1991) . More recently Hagan (2006 , p. 134) introduced the distinction between Organized Crime (capitalized) to refer to criminal organizations and organized crime (lower case) to refer to criminal activities that require a degree of organization. Roughly speaking, the evolution of the organized crime debate worldwide over the past one hundred years can be synthesized in a shift from “What” to “Who” and a reverting tide from “Who” to “What,” with an increasing merger of the two; however, not all countries, as we will see below, fall neatly into this scheme.

The two basic and rival notions of organized crime have been used not only interchangeably, but also simultaneously. From the 1950s onward, in fact, the assumption spread in the United States that criminal organizations were responsible for most serious criminal activities for gain. However, starting with Reuter’s seminal book Disorganized Crime (1983), numerous researchers (e.g., van Duyne 1997 ; Naylor 2003 ; van Duyne and Levi 2005 ) have proven this assumption to be wrong (see also Paoli 2002b and Kleemans’s essay titled Theoretical Perspectives on Organized Crime and Bouchard and Morselli’s essay titled Opportunistic Structures of Organized Crime ), so much so that most academics now have to choose between one of the two rival notions of organized crime. Policymaking and law enforcement agencies worldwide also increasingly realize that stable, large-scale criminal organizations are far from monopolizing profit-making criminal activities (e.g., Europol 2003 ). Rather than discarding the pair “criminal organizations” and “profit-making criminal activities,” they have increasingly watered down the definition of criminal organizations so as to include also networks, gangs, cells and any group composed of at least three people working together for some time (e.g., United Nations General Assembly 2000a ; White House 2011 ; Serious Organised Crime Agency 2012 ; BKA annual; see below). For some agencies (e.g., Serious Organised Crime Agency 2012 ) and scholars (e.g. Felson 2009 , p. 159–160), organized crime seems to mean little more than co-offending by more than two perpetrators (see Finckenauer 2005 , pp. 76–78; Calderoni 2012 , p. 1373).

The supposed territorial scope of organized crime has also changed. Originally, organized crime was equated with racketeering, another vague notion at the core of which there is extortion, an activity necessarily territorially based and usually carried out only on a local basis. Since the 1990s, instead, many researchers (e.g., Williams and Florez 1994 ; Siegel, van de Bunt, and Zaitch 2003 ) and an even larger number of government agencies and international organizations, ranging from the European Union to the United Nations ( United Nations 1994 ; Council of the European Union 1997a ; United Nations General Assembly 2000a ; White House 2011 ), have emphasized the transnational nature of organized crime.

The policy and scientific legitimacy and relevance of the organized crime concept have also varied considerably over time. Except for the United States and Italy, most other nations did not regard organized crime as a serious domestic problem until the late 1980s. Whereas media accounts of organized crime and mafias have always fascinated the general public, most scholars shunned the topic until the early 1990s. Only since that period has organized crime become an accepted policy and scientific concept virtually throughout the world.

Since the 1990s, the majority of governments, at least in the developed world, and many international organizations, including the UN, have adopted bills, decrees, action plans, or international treaties specifically targeting organized crime, often foreseeing extensive new prosecutorial powers to law enforcement agencies—as the United States had already done in the 1960s and 1970s. The fight against organized crime has also been used to justify far-reaching criminal justice reforms in several countries, particularly in Europe (see Fijnaut and Paoli 2004 ). In turn, international organizations, such as the European Union bureaucracy (e.g., Council 1997 and 2003; see Fijnaut’s essay titled European Union Organized Crime Control Policies ), have been keen, since the early 1990s, to emphasize the transnational dimension of the organized crime threat in order to increase their competencies and powers and/or to harmonize and extend criminal laws and law enforcement procedural powers across their Member States. This harmonization has also been the main goal of the 2000 UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime ( McClean 2007 ).

Despite some persisting resistance (e.g., Cornils and Greve 2004 ), organized crime has also become a legitimate scientific research topic, attracting considerable attention from criminologists and other social scientists during the 1990s and the early 21st century, particularly in Europe. The concept of organized crime might have already reached its apex of popularity, however. As shown below, again particularly in Europe, both policymakers and researchers have begun to replace it with alternative concepts.

A. The American Debate: From “What” to “Who”

Despite uncertainties about the time and place of its coinage, organized crime is—originally—an American concept. The exact term organized crime was probably first used in the 1896 annual report of the New York Society for the Prevention of Crime, which employed it to refer to gambling and prostitution operations that were protected by public officials ( Woodiwiss 2003 , p. 5; see von Lampe 2001 ; Woodiwiss 2001 ).

Commentators and academics began to make serious efforts to define and discuss organized crime in the 1920s and 1930s, when Prohibition greatly enhanced the development of North American illegal markets. Several meanings were then attached to the term organized crime , but it was still rarely used to signify separate associations of gangsters. Most often organized crime was made synonymous with racketeering, another loose expression that usually referred to extortion, predatory activities, and the provision of a variety of illegal goods and services, ranging from illegal drugs and liquor to gambling and counterfeit documents ( Smith 1975 , pp. 66–81; Woodiwiss 2003 , p. 7). Even Thrasher, whose 1927 book The Gang (1963, p. 286) constitutes the first full-scale treatment of organized crime, made it clear that “organized crime must not be visualized as a vast edifice of hard and fast structures” and stressed its links with the upper world by highlighting the “indispensable functions” for professional criminals played by “certain specialized persons or groups,” including doctors, lawyers, politicians, and corrupt officials (ibid.).

The first US government attempt to study organized crime was conducted between 1929 and 1931 under the auspices of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement chaired by George Wickersham. In their report to the commission on the costs of crime, two of the commission’s consultants dealt extensively with organized crime, structuring their data “around categories based on criminal law, not categories based on criminals. What was more important than Who ” ( Smith 1991 , p. 142).

The understanding of organized crime as a set of criminal entrepreneurial activities with the frequent involvement of legal businesses and government representatives was abandoned after World War II. From the late 1940s on, conceptualizations of the problem focused on foreign career criminals who allegedly constituted well-structured and powerful criminal organizations representing a threat to the integrity of American society and politics. As opposed to previous analyses, the role played by politicians, public officials, professionals, and other representatives of the “respectable classes” was largely played down or ignored ( Woodiwiss 2003 , pp. 14–15).

The new organization-based approach, which was dubbed the “alien conspiracy” theory by its critics due to its emphasis on foreign criminals, was most clearly enunciated by the US Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, which was active from 1950 to 1951 under the chairmanship of Sen. Estes Kefauver. Despite the scarcity of empirical proof, the committee set out the terms of an Italian mafia-centered view of organized crime that remained the US official standpoint for almost three decades. This identified organized crime with a nationwide, centralized criminal organization dominating the most profitable illegal markets, which allegedly derived from an analogous parallel Sicilian organization and largely consisted of migrants of Italian (and specifically Sicilian) origin. In its Third Interim Report , the Kefauver Committee famously concluded: “There is a nationwide crime syndicate known as the Mafia, whose tentacles are found in many large cities. It has international ramifications which appear most clearly in connection with the narcotics traffic. Its leaders are usually found in control of the most lucrative rackets of their cities” ( US Senate 1951 , p. 131).

By stressing the Mafia’s control of US illegal markets, Kefauver and his colleagues effectively demonstrated the need for increased federal involvement in the enforcement of the gambling and drug laws. Seen from this perspective, it is perhaps no coincidence that the Federal Narcotics Bureau (a forerunner of the contemporary Drug Enforcement Administration) was the major “moral entrepreneur” of the new organization-based understanding of organized crime ( Smith 1975 , pp. 138–141).

The merger of the two concepts of organized crime and mafia was fully accomplished in 1963 when Joe Valachi testified before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. By recalling his experiences as a low-ranking member of an Italian-American mafia association called (La) Cosa Nostra, Valachi gave a new name to the menacing criminal organization singled out by the Kefauver Committee and provided many details about its internal composition and illegal activities ( US Senate 1963 ). Thanks to extensive television coverage, Valachi’s views were popularized among the American public ( Smith 1975 , pp. 222–242; see also Albanese’s essay titled The Italian-American Mafia ).

The mafia-centered concept of organized crime that consolidated during the 1950s and 1960s was to no small degree the result of a focus on New York City. Despite its tremendous impact on public perception, it soon proved unsuitable for devising valid law enforcement strategies for the entire United States. After rejecting a proposal to outlaw membership in Cosa Nostra, 2 Congress passed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupted Organizations (RICO) Act in 1970, which embodied an extremely broad underlying concept of organized crime ( Atkinson 1978 ; see also Blakey 2006 and Douglass and Layne 2011 ). Likewise, many state commissions on organized crime, established in response to the national debate, at best paid lip-service to the concept of Cosa Nostra as an all-encompassing criminal organization. Instead, they defined organized crime in much broader terms to include less structured gangs and illicit enterprises ( von Lampe 1998 , pp. 97–99).

However, the myth of a powerful and centralized mafia organization representing a threat to America’s political, economic, and legal systems long continued to be resorted to whenever police budgets had to be raised or new legislation increasing federal jurisdiction had to be passed. New legislation gave federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies an unprecedented array of powers, such as installing wiretapping and eavesdropping devices, resorting to informants, and seizing the financial assets of their targets. It also authorized special grand juries, the detention of recalcitrant witnesses, and increased sentences for dangerous adult special offenders ( Block and Chambliss 1981 , pp. 191–215; Woodiwiss and Hobbs 2009 ; see also Jacobs and Dondlinger’s essay titled Organized Crime Control in the United States of America ).

The mafia-centered view of organized crime also continued to dominate the public perception of the problem, both in the United States and internationally. Since the 1960s, hundreds of books have been written on the topic and dozens of movies have been made. Some of these—above all, Mario Puzo’s The Godfather (1969) and its film adaptation by Francis Ford Coppola (1972)—have been so successful that they have profoundly shaped the general understanding of organized crime and the mafia in the United States and elsewhere. For many people, the Italian-American mafia, which is de facto identified with organized crime, is and behaves as is recounted in these romanticized novels and films (see Finckenauer 2005 ).

Such an interpretation received scientific systematization from Donald Cressey (1969) . In his view, La Cosa Nostra constituted a hierarchical and “rationally designed” organization, very close to Max Weber’s ideal type of legal-rational bureaucracy and, therefore, capable of operating in contemporary America.

II. The American Debate II: The Merger of “Who” and “What”

The identification of the mafia with organized crime—and thus the idea of an alien conspiracy polluting the economic and social life of the country—has been rejected by the majority of American social scientists since the 1960s. These have alternatively accused the mafia-centered view of organized crime of being ideological, serving personal political interests, and lacking in accuracy and empirical evidence ( Moore 1974 ; Smith 1975 ). Some scholars, however, overreacted; up to the early 1980s, they categorically denied the existence of the Italian-American mafia as a structured and longstanding criminal organization (see, among others, Hawkins 1969 ).

Scientific attention was redirected from “Who” back to “What” and upon the most visible and noncontroversial aspect of organized crime: the supply of illegal products and services. To eradicate ethnic stereotypes of crime and direct attention to the marketplace, several authors have put forward the expression “illicit” or “illegal enterprise” as a substitute for the ethnically loaded term organized crime . As Smith (1975 , p. 335), one of the earliest proponents of the new approach, expressed it, “illicit enterprise is the extension of legitimate market activities into areas normally proscribed—i.e., beyond existing limits of law—for the pursuit of profit and in response to a latent illicit demand” (see also Haller 1990 and Yeager 2012 ).

More often, however, organized crime itself has been equated with the provision of illegal goods and services. Hence, according to Block and Chambliss, “organized crime [should] be defined as (or perhaps better limited to) those illegal activities involving the management and coordination of racketeering and vice” (1981, p. 13). Organized crime has, thus, become a synonym for illegal enterprise. That is, the involvement in criminal market activities has become nowadays the basic requirement of virtually all definitions of organized crime in the US scientific and official discourse, and this view is shared by both supporters of the mafia-centered understanding of organized crime and its critics (see Hagan 1983 ).

A negative side-effect of this partial consensus has been that the term organized crime is intermittently used to refer to both sets of criminal organizations and sets of activities. In the definition quoted above, Block and Chambliss clearly present organized crime as a set of activities. The identification of organized crime with a set of organizations is instead fostered by supporters of the US official standpoint and a few independent scholars, including critics of the official understanding of organized crime. According to Reuter (1983 , p. 175), for example, “organized crime consists of organizations that have durability, hierarchy and involvement in a multiplicity of criminal activities….The Mafia provides the most enduring and significant form of organized crime” (see also Finckenauer 2005 ). Unsurprisingly, the frequent confusion between offender and offense often leads to circular reasoning ( Maltz 1976 ). In 1986, for example, the (second) President’s Commission on Organized Crime (1986 , p. 11) concluded that drug trafficking was “the single most serious organized crime problem in the United States and the largest source of income for organized crime.”

When it became evident in the early 1980s that “the histories of American organized crime have been ordinarily drawn too narrowly in that they have focused nearly exclusively on the Mafia or La Cosa Nostra” ( President’s Commission 1986 , p. 176), the strategy pursued by American government institutions was to broaden the definition of organized crime to include other criminal organizations involved full-time in the supply of illegal commodities in demand by the general populace. In its 1986 report, the President’s Commission on Organized Crime (1986) , for example, listed a host of other organized crime entities in addition to Cosa Nostra, including outlaw motorcycle and prison gangs, Colombian cartels, the Japanese Yakuza, and Russian groups. Potter (1994 , p. 7) aptly described the new official consensus as the “pluralist” revision of the alien conspiracy interpretation.

While organized crime disappeared from the US policy agenda during the 1990s and at the dawn of the current century (see Finklea 2010 ), interest has resurged since 2008. In that year, the US Department of Justice (2008) released the “Law Enforcement Strategy to Combat International Organized Crime” and the Attorney General reconvened the Organized Crime Council, which had not met for the previous fifteen years. In 2009, the Justice Department also established the International Organized Crime Intelligence and Operations Center ( Picarelli 2011 ). In 2011, the Obama administration announced its new “Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime” (White House 2011 ). In both strategies, organized crime is still understood as a set of criminal organizations primarily interested in pursuing gain with crime: “organized crime refers to those self-perpetuating associations of individuals who operate internationally for the purpose of obtaining power, influence, monetary and/or commercial gains, wholly or in part by illegal means, while protecting their activities through a pattern of corruption and/or violence” ( US Department of Justice 2008 , p. 2; White House 2011 ).

In line with international research and policy developments, however, US policymakers now adopt a looser understanding of organized crime. They write: “there is no single structure under which transnational criminals operate; they vary from hierarchies to clans, networks, cells, and may evolve to other structures” (ibid.). The focus on the transnational (or international) nature of organized crime is also new and reflects changes in the international policy context (see below) as well as in the underlying phenomenon, but it is also reminiscent of the old habit of US policy-makers’ of considering organized crime as a threat coming from abroad. Moreover, as in other jurisdictions, the initial focus on criminal organizations gives way to a listing of illegal market activities under the assumption that transnational organized crime is responsible for them ( White House 2011 ; see infra).

III. The Debate in Europe: Prevalent Focus on “What” with Few Exceptions

Together with Spain, where organized crime is often equated with terrorist groups ( de la Cuesta 2004 ), Italy is the only country in Europe that has remained faithful to an understanding of organized crime in terms of criminal organizations. True, until the early 1980s the authors of the first studies on the mafia denied the corporate dimension of the mafia phenomenon (e.g., Hess 1973 and Arlacchi 1988 )—i.e., they stated that single individuals behaved according to mafia subcultural codes and exercised power on a local basis but that no formal mafia organization existed—with some of them being inspired by the illegal enterprise paradigm in vogue in the United States. Since the late 1980s, however, a consensus has emerged in Italy—among policymakers, law enforcement agencies, the public, and the scholars—that organized crime consists of criminal organizations, which, in that context, primarily means Southern Italian mafia organizations. The key conceptual reference is the article 416bis of the Italian Criminal Code, which was adopted in 1982 and that introduced the offense of associazione a delinquere di tipo mafioso (mafia-type criminal organization), thus bringing for the first time the sociological concept of mafia into the criminal code ( Turone 1995 ; see also Mitsilegas 2003 , p. 57). Accordingly, a mafia-type delinquent organization consists of three or more persons

who belong use of the power of intimidation afforded by the associative bond and the state of subjugation and criminal silence ( omertà ) which derives from such a bond to commit crimes, to acquire directly or indirectly the management or control of economic activities, concessions, authorizations or public contracts and services, to gain unjust profits or advantages for themselves or for others or to prevent or obstruct the free exercise of the vote and to obtain votes for themselves or others during elections. (Codice penale 2013).

In Italy, both policymakers (e.g., Forgione 2009 ) and (academic and nonacademic) observers (e.g., Massari and Becucci 2001 ; Saviano 2008 ) also tend to believe that Italian mafia groups constitute the archetype of organized crime as reflected by the Italian expressions “new” or “ethnic mafias.”

With the exception of Italy and Spain, the “illegal enterprise” approach has since the 1970s acquired a dominant position in the scientific debate in Europe and has since the late 1980s been dominant in the policy debate as well, with a resulting focus on criminal activities for gain. As early as the mid-1970s (1975), Hans-Jürgen Kerner and John Mack talked about a “crime industry,” and, in an earlier report written in German, Kerner subscribed even more explicitly to the view of organized crime as an enterprise (1973). The emphasis on illegal market activities has remained unchallenged ever since. Thus, for example, according to Hobbs (1994 , pp. 444–445) “the master context for professional and organized crime is the marketplace…[and] the marketplace can be seen to define and shape professional and organized criminal activity.” Likewise, the Dutch scholar van Duyne points out that organized crime results from illegal market dynamics: “What is organized crime without organizing some kind of criminal trade; without selling and buying of forbidden goods and services in an organizational context? The answer is simply nothing” (1997, p. 203). More recently, scholars such as Naylor (2003) , van Duyne, Maljevic, and van Dijck (2006) , Edwards and Levi (2008) , and Levi (2012) have suggested getting rid altogether of the expression organized crime and focusing instead on the organization of crime for gain.

The loose understanding of organized crime in terms of profit-making criminal activities has allowed organized crime to become a successful policy term even in European countries that had no mafia problems. Concern for organized crime first spread in the late 1980s to Germany and the Netherlands and then, to various degrees, to other European states ( van Duyne and Vander Beken 2009 ). Given its vagueness and elasticity, the term organized crime could be used to express the fear that the Italian mafia groups could invade the rest of Europe—a fear that reached its peak in the early 1990s after the murders of Judges Falcone and Borsellino by the Sicilian Cosa Nostra—but also refer to profit-making criminal activities and entrepreneurs close to home or to the real and imagined threats coming from the East after the 1989 fall of the Iron Curtain and the 1991 implosion of the Soviet Union.

With few partial exceptions (e.g., for the Netherlands, Fijnaut et al. 1998 ; and, for Spain, de la Cuesta 2004 ), the official (or semi-official) definitions of organized crime adopted in Europe draw from the illegal enterprise paradigm. The definition adopted by German state ministers of the interior and justice in 1986, which has been very influential (e.g., van Duyne 1997 ) and has been adopted also by other governments (e.g., Belgium [College van Procureurs-generaal bij de Hoven van Beroep 2006]), for example states:

Organized crime constitutes the planned commission of criminal offenses to acquire profit or power. Such criminal offenses have to be, each or in their entirety, of a major significance and be carried out by more than two participants who cooperate within a division of labor for a long or undetermined time-span using a) commercial or commercial-like structures, b) violence or other means of intimidation, or c) influence on politics, media, public administration, justice, and legitimate economy. (BKA, annual)

The influence of the illegal enterprise paradigm on the understanding of organized crime in Germany and elsewhere is well illustrated by the following statement, made by Korneck, an experienced Frankfurt prosecutor:

Experts who work not only theoretically but also practically maintain that organized crime implies the activities of persons who commit serious offences in an enduring co-operation founded on the principle of the division of labor with the aim of maximizing profits. If you omit the reference to “serious offences,” you are left with the description of an activity that in Germany and in the entire Western world is usually described as entrepreneurial activity. ( Raith 1989 , p. 268)

Analogous, market-oriented definitions of organized crime have been adopted in the United Kingdom. The most recent one is bafflingly simple: “Organised crime is defined as those involved, normally working with others, in continuing serious criminal activities for substantial profit, whether based in the UK or elsewhere” ( Serious Organised Crime Agency 2012 ; see Paoli and Fijnaut 2004 . pp. 36–37 for earlier definitions).

The UK approach not only resembles the German one, but also shares the important characteristic of not providing a legal definition. The concept of organized crime too vague to be transformed into a full-fledged legal category and policymakers and practitioners do not welcome a legal definition for fear of creating legal controversy that might unduly complicate criminal trials (see Levi 2004 ).

Once the European Union began to deal with the issue in the early 1990s, it turned out to be impossible to adopt a uniform definition of organized crime, given the divergent assessment of the underlying problems and the different legal systems of the European Member States (at that time 12 states, now 27; see van der Heijden 1996 ). As a result, the EU developed in 1997 a mere grid with 11 characteristics. Accordingly, there is organized crime if the criminal groups involved have at least six of the following characteristics, of which 1, 3, 5, and 11 were considered mandatory:

Collaboration of more than two people;

each with their own appointed tasks;

for a prolonged or indefinite period of time (this criterion refers to the stability and (potential) durability of the group);

using some form of discipline and control;

suspected of the commission of serious criminal offenses;

operating on an international level;

using violence or other means suitable for intimidation;

using commercial or businesslike structures;

engaged in money laundering;

exerting influence on politics, the media, public administration, judicial authorities, or the economy;

motivated by the pursuit of profit and/or power ( Council of the European Union 1997b ).

Despite its vagueness, this grid-like definition of organized crime served as a basis for a flurry of high-level policy initiatives. At times the need to fight organized crime more effectively was presented as one of the main reasons for the advancement of policymaking on justice and home affairs within the EU. Due to its ambiguity, organized crime has not become a full-fledged legal category. However, the EU has repeatedly tried to “approximate”—i.e., harmonize—the Member States’ legal definition of the offense of membership in a criminal organization, which is the closest legal category (see Calderoni 2012 ), as well as to increase police and prosecutorial powers and foster international law enforcement cooperation (see Fijnaut’s essay titled European Union Organized Crime Control Policies) .

On the basis of the grid, Europol, the EU criminal intelligence agency, started to produce the first organized crime situation reports. 3 In some of its reports, Europol (e.g., 2006 and 2007) proposed typologies of organized crime groups and, following the shift from mere “Organized Crime Situation Reports” to “Organized Crime Threat Assessments” in 2006, it attempted to assess—with inadequate means and much criticized results ( Edwards and Levi 2008 ; van Duyne and Vander Beken 2009 ; Zoutendijk 2010 )—organized crime threats. More recently, Europol as well as the German Federal Police Office (BKA, annual) and the Serious Organised Crime Agency (2006) in the United Kingdom arranged their organized crime reports around criminal activities—with limited attention to the actors themselves. The policy definitions of organized crime have been so watered down that policymakers and law enforcement officials seem to assume, at least implicitly, that all offenders engaging in profit-making criminal activities fulfill the definitional requirements and thus belong to organized crime.

IV. Going International: Transnational Organized Crime

Since the late 1980s, the transnational nature of organized crime has been emphasized so much so that the expression transnational organized crime has become fixed. Already during that decade, the Council of Europe, the Western European states that had signed the 1985 Schengen Agreement on the abolishment of border controls, and the European Communities (the predecessor of the European Union) started to talk about cross-border crime and addressed typical transnational criminal activities, such as drug trafficking and money laundering (Paoli and Fijnaut 2009). During the 1990s, the UN fully institutionalized the expression transnational organized crime , stressing the seriousness of the related problems and the need for an encompassing policy approach. In 1994, the UN convened a World Ministerial Conference on Organised Transnational Crime in Naples in which this “new dimension of more ‘traditional’ forms of organized crime” was singled out as “one of the major threats that Governments have to deal with in order to ensure their stability, the safety of their people, the preservation of the whole fabric of society and the viability and further development of their economies” ( United Nations General Assembly 1994 , p. 2).

The concept of transnational organized crime serves the UN and other international organizations well as it allows them to justify their intervention in this area at the same time as it spreads the responsibility of the problem over many countries, thus avoiding the politically dangerous stigmatization of a few. However, the emphasis on the transnational dimension of organized crime can be misleading, as it obscures the strong local roots and spheres of activity of most forms of organized crime. In Hobbs’s words (1998 , p. 419), “organized crime is not experienced globally or transnationally for these are abstract fields devoid of relations” (see also Beare 2003 , p. xxi). Some of the longest-standing and most notorious criminal organizations, such as the Italian mafia groups or the Chinese Triads, could develop and can even today continue to reproduce themselves only within very specific sociocultural contexts (see Paoli’s essay titled The Italian Mafia and Chin’s essay titled Chinese Organized Crime ). Even in typically transnational illegal types of trade, such as drug trafficking, transnationality usually refers exclusively to the transportation of commodities, communication between exporters and importers, and the eventual laundering of profits (Paoli and Fijnaut 2009). Crucial phases, such as production and processing, wholesale and retail distribution, and final consumption of the drugs take place locally.

At the World Ministerial Conference in Naples, the new emphasis on the complexity and borderlessness of transnational organized crime was exploited to foster increased and more effective international cooperation. Countries were called to adopt many of the measures pioneered by the United States and Italy in their fight against mafia-type organized crime, neglecting the fact that this form of organized crime was not present in most UN Member States and was far from controlling illegal markets and exhausting organized crime qua enterprise crime even in the two aforementioned countries.

The policy goals outlined by the World Ministerial Conference were actively pursued with the drafting and ratification of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, which was opened for signature in December 2000, came into force in September 2003 and, as of September 2012, was ratified by 147 countries ( United Nations 2012 ). When it comes to the crucial task of legally defining organized crime, however, this international agreement has adopted “a minimum common denominator definition” ( Paoli 2002a : 208), with no strict criteria in terms of number of members and group structure. Article 2, paragraph (a) of the Convention states: “‘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 General Assembly 2000a : 25). To dispel any doubts regarding the broadness of this definition, in the interpretative notes for the official records, enclosed in the convention, the Ad Hoc Committee for the Elaboration of the Convention states: “the term ‘structured group’ is to be used in a broad sense so as to include both groups with hierarchical or other elaborate structure and non-hierarchical groups where the roles of the members need not be formally defined” ( United Nations General Assembly 2000b , p. 2; see also McClean 2007 ; Obokata 2010 ). This means that the incisive investigative methods and other legislative and institutional changes recommended by the World Ministerial Conference of 1994 and now to a large extent included in the Convention can be also applied to cliques, gangs, and networks that are very far removed from the stereotypes dominating the media and political discourse (see Levi 2012 , p. 597). 4

V. Conclusions: The Future of the Concept Organized Crime

In Europe, this policy-making pattern is reaching full completion, as EU policymakers are shifting emphasis from “organized” crime to a combination of organized and “serious” crime. As early as 2002, Eurojust, the EU’s judicial cooperation unit, was set up by the Council of the European Union (2002), “with a view to reinforcing the fight against serious crime.” In 2009, Europol’s mission was enlarged to support law enforcement agencies of EU Member States “in preventing and combating organised crime, terrorism and other forms of serious crime affecting two or more Member States” ( Council of the European Union 2009 , p. 37; de Moor and Vermeulen 2010 ). The third EU multiannual program for justice and home affairs, the so-called Stockholm Programme, which was adopted in 2009 and extends until 2014, also called for the “protection against serious and organized crime” and for a selection of criminal activities to be tackled as a priority at the EU level ( Council of the European Union 2010 ). Dorn (2009) interprets these policy changes as signs of the “end of organized crime in the EU.” Cynics might say that, once an entire instrumentation was established at the EU level and in the EU Member States for the fight against organized crime, policymakers broadened as much as possible its scope of application by substituting organized crime with the even vaguer concept of serious crime, which does not require the participation of three persons and is thus also applicable to lone offenders. More benign observers would interpret the shift to serious crime as an implicit recognition of the considerable differences in the manifestations of organized crime across the EU and their resulting harm, anticipating a possible admission that not all forms of organized crime are equally serious ( Dorn 2009 ).

Several scholars also increasingly prefer to use alternative, more specific, albeit partially overlapping, concepts. Those focusing on criminal actors speak of illegal enterprises and networks (for a review, see Bouchard and Morselli’s essay titled Opportunistic Structures of Organized Crime ), criminal groups ( Morselli, Turcotte, and Tenti 2011 ) or mafias ( Varese 2011 ). Scholars emphasizing criminal activities refer to organized crimes ( Cornish and Clarke 2002 ), profit-driven crime ( Naylor 2003 ), criminal entrepreneurship ( Gottschalk 2009 ), or the organization of serious crimes for gain ( Edwards and Levi 2008 ; Levi 2012 ).

Despite all the weaknesses of the concept of organized crime, it is far too soon to speak of its decline at the international level. As mentioned earlier, in the United States, policy interest in the topic has recently revived. Despite the shift within the EU bureaucracy, some European countries still emphasize the threat of organized crime (e.g., Cabinet Office 2011 ). In a number of countries outside Europe and North America concern is also growing about organized crime, and ad hoc bills have been recently passed to control it more effectively. This concern and the resulting police initiatives have sometimes been triggered by the implementation of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (see Obokata 2010 ), but they have mostly been fostered by the growing concern for local criminal phenomena and organizations, some of which have a long history. In Australia, for example, the public and policy attention has focused since the turn of the 21st century on outlaw motorcycle gangs. In a number of other countries criminal organizations sometimes going back to the 17th century, such as the thuggees in India and the Triads in China, traditionally embody the local conceptions of organized crime (see Ayling and Broadhurst’s essay titled Organized Crime Control in Australia and New Zealand and Broadhurst and Farrelly’s essay titled Organized Crime Control in Asia: Examples from India, China and the Golden Triangle ). In these countries as well, we can identify the same policy-making pattern that we have seen in both the United States and Europe: New legislative provisions usually entailing heavier sentences for the culprits and/or more incisive powers for law enforcement agencies are justified with the threat coming from one or more allegedly powerful and well-structured criminal organizations; the provisions adopted are crafted in such a way that they are applicable to a much broader range of offenders, including those who merely cooperate with each other in the commission of criminal activities (see, for Australia, Ayling 2011 ).

These developments show that organized crime remains a catchy label to signify popular anxieties and foster legislative and institutional changes. Moreover, it is engrained in numerous policy documents, including some key international treaties, and therefore, despite all its ambiguities, it is not likely to lose its policy and, consequently, its scientific relevance soon.

For a list of definitions, see http://www.organized-crime.de/OCDEF.htm . Other criminological concepts, such as white-collar, political and professional crime, entail similar definitional problems (see Hagan 2006 ).

See U.S. Senate Bill 2187, 89th Congress and U.S. Senate Bill 678, 90th Congress.

From 1996 to 2005, the Council of Europe—another European supranational organization larger than the EU and comprising 47 European states—also produced annual reports with regards to organized crime. The reports’ definition of organized crime and data collection methods, were comparable to those of Europol’s (e.g., Council of Europe 1998 ).

A similar path has been followed by the European Union: see Paoli and Fijnaut (2004) and Calderoni (2012) .

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106 Organized Crime Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

Organized crime is a pervasive and complex phenomenon that has plagued societies for centuries. From the Italian Mafia to Mexican drug cartels, organized crime groups have managed to infiltrate all levels of society, from politics to business.

If you are studying criminology or criminal justice, you may be tasked with writing an essay on organized crime. To help you get started, we have compiled a list of 106 organized crime essay topic ideas and examples:

The history and origins of organized crime
The impact of organized crime on society
The role of organized crime in human trafficking
The relationship between organized crime and terrorism
The evolution of organized crime in the digital age
The influence of organized crime on politics
The strategies used by law enforcement to combat organized crime
The impact of organized crime on economic development
The gender dynamics of organized crime
The role of organized crime in the drug trade
The connection between organized crime and corruption
The role of the Italian Mafia in organized crime
The impact of organized crime on urban communities
The tactics used by organized crime groups to evade law enforcement
The relationship between organized crime and cybercrime
The impact of organized crime on global security
The role of organized crime in the illegal arms trade
The connection between organized crime and money laundering
The role of organized crime in the smuggling of contraband goods
The impact of organized crime on the environment
The effectiveness of international cooperation in combating organized crime
The role of organized crime in the trafficking of counterfeit goods
The impact of organized crime on human rights
The connection between organized crime and organized labor
The role of organized crime in the illegal gambling industry
The strategies used by organized crime groups to recruit new members
The impact of organized crime on the healthcare industry
The relationship between organized crime and piracy
The role of organized crime in the illegal wildlife trade
The connection between organized crime and the arms trade
The impact of organized crime on the music industry
The role of organized crime in the trafficking of cultural artifacts
The tactics used by organized crime groups to intimidate and control communities
The impact of organized crime on the education system
The relationship between organized crime and the illegal drug trade
The role of organized crime in the trafficking of women and children
The connection between organized crime and political corruption
The impact of organized crime on the transportation industry
The strategies used by law enforcement to dismantle organized crime networks
The impact of organized crime on the construction industry
The relationship between organized crime and the trafficking of organs
The connection between organized crime and the smuggling of migrants
The impact of organized crime on the fashion industry
The strategies used by law enforcement to disrupt organized crime activities
The role of organized crime in the counterfeit pharmaceutical industry
The relationship between organized crime and the illegal tobacco trade
The impact of organized crime on the food industry
The connection between organized crime and the trafficking of drugs
The role of organized crime in the illegal mining industry
The impact of organized crime on the telecommunications industry
The strategies used by law enforcement to combat organized crime in the digital age
The role of organized crime in the illegal fishing industry
The relationship between organized crime and the illegal logging trade
The impact of organized crime on the energy industry
The connection between organized crime and the trafficking of arms
The role of organized crime in the illegal waste disposal industry
The impact of organized crime on the pharmaceutical industry
The strategies used by law enforcement to combat organized crime in the healthcare sector
The relationship between organized crime and the illegal wildlife trade
The impact of organized crime on the pornography industry
The connection between organized crime and the trafficking of human organs
The role of organized crime in the illegal antiquities trade
The strategies used by law enforcement to combat organized crime in the music industry
The impact of organized crime on the trafficking of women and children
The relationship between organized crime and the trafficking of cultural artifacts
The role of organized crime in the fashion industry
The strategies used by law enforcement to combat organized crime in the food industry
The relationship between organized crime and the illegal mining industry

These are just a few ideas to get you started on your organized crime essay. Remember to choose a topic that interests you and conduct thorough research to support your arguments. Good luck!

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The Mafia Organized Crime

This essay about the mafia explores its origins, evolution, and impact on society. Originating in Sicily in the 19th century, the mafia has since spread globally, adapting to different cultures and political landscapes. Characterized by its criminal activities, structured hierarchies, and a code of secrecy, the mafia infiltrates legitimate societal institutions, undermining the rule of law and contributing to violence and corruption. The essay underscores the complexity of combating these organizations, highlighting the necessity for international cooperation and innovative strategies to dismantle their networks and protect communities. It reflects on the mafia as a representation of human society’s darker facets, emphasizing the importance of upholding justice, equality, and human dignity in the fight against such criminal entities.

How it works

When we talk about the mafia, we’re diving into a topic that spans centuries, cultures, and continents. The word itself, “mafia,” conjures images of shadowy figures, age-old rituals, and a code of silence that’s as impenetrable as it is infamous. Yet, the mafia is more than just a staple of crime movies and novels; it’s a complex and layered phenomenon that has evolved over time, adapting to changes in society, economics, and politics.

Originating in Sicily, Italy, during the early 19th century, the term “mafia” initially referred to a loose association of individuals engaged in protection rackets, smuggling, and other illicit activities.

The Sicilian Mafia, also known as Cosa Nostra, which translates to “our thing,” established itself as a powerful force within Italian society, deeply rooted in the local culture and economy. Its members abided by a strict code of conduct that emphasized honor, loyalty, and omertà—a vow of silence that forbade cooperation with authorities.

However, the concept of the mafia isn’t confined to the Italian context. Over time, similar organizations have emerged in various parts of the world, each adapting the model to its unique cultural and socio-political environment. The Russian Mafia, the Japanese Yakuza, and the American Mafia are just a few examples of how this criminal phenomenon has diversified, impacting countries globally. Despite their differences, these groups share certain characteristics, including structured hierarchies, the pursuit of power and wealth through illegal means, and a code of secrecy that protects their operations.

At the heart of the mafia’s power is its ability to operate within the shadows of legitimate society. By infiltrating political, economic, and social institutions, mafia groups can exert significant influence, often blurring the lines between the legal and the illegal. This infiltration allows them to engage in a wide range of criminal activities, from drug trafficking and money laundering to extortion and murder, all while maintaining a veneer of respectability.

The mafia’s impact on society is profound and multifaceted. On the one hand, it can provide a perverse form of order and protection in areas where governmental and legal institutions are weak or corrupt. On the other hand, its activities undermine the rule of law, perpetuate violence, and erode trust in public institutions. The cost of the mafia’s influence is not just measured in economic terms but also in the degradation of social fabric and human lives.

Addressing the challenge posed by mafia organizations requires a concerted and international effort. Traditional law enforcement strategies, while necessary, are often insufficient to dismantle these deeply entrenched networks. Combating the mafia effectively demands innovative approaches that focus on cutting off their financial resources, dismantling their social and political connections, and providing support for communities vulnerable to their influence.

In conclusion, the mafia represents a dark and enduring aspect of human society, embodying our capacity for loyalty and honor as well as our propensity for greed and violence. Understanding the mafia requires looking beyond the stereotypes to grasp the complex realities of its existence and operation. As we continue to confront this challenge, it’s clear that the fight against the mafia is not just about law enforcement; it’s about safeguarding the very principles of justice, equality, and human dignity.

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Home / Essay Samples / Crime / Organized Crime

Organized Crime Essay Examples

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