Organised Crime & Crime Prevention - what works? - Scandinavian ...

NSfK’s 40. forskerseminar, Espoo, Finland 1998
As the desire to expand Union-wide cooperation in the battle against organized crime has
been operationalized by central officials and judicial authorities, the understanding of
organized crime has become more concrete, but at the same time it has also been diluted, so
that the fundamental and salient features of organized crime as underscored in the European
Parliament’s definition have been obliterated.
The Police Definition of Organized Crime
In the early 1990’s the Drugs and Organized Crime Group began issuing annual joint EU
situation reports on the extent and directions of international organized crime. The EU reports
were and are based on national reports, but these were not standardized until 1994 when an ad
hoc Working Group on International Organized Crime developed a proposal for the
systematic reporting of national organized crime (Appendix 2 to K.4-udvalget, 1993). The K4
Committee used this to produce a number of instructions on how the annual national reports
should be made: what subjects the reports should cover (Appendix B to K.4-udvalget, 1995)
and a list of characteristic features of organized crime (Appendix C), i.e. operative directions
indicating how organized crime can be identified, classified, and distinguished from other
forms of crime.
Based on these criteria, the national police forces have prepared annual reports on organized
crime in their country during the past year and these reports have been combined to form
annual situational reports on organized crime in the European Union (Arbejdsgruppen
vedrørende Narkotika og Organiseret Kriminalitet, 1995a; Arbejdsgruppen vedrørende
Narkotika og Organiseret Kriminalitet, 1995b; Arbejdsgruppen vedrørende Narkotika og
Organiseret Kriminalitet, 1996; Arbejdsgruppen vedrørende Narkotika og Organiseret
Kriminalitet, 1997).
The K.4 Committee’s list of features of organized crime includes eleven characteristics:
“At least six of the following characteristics shall be present, three of which shall be nos. 1, 5,
and 11 below, for a crime or criminal group to be characterized as organized crime:
1. Collaboration of more than two people;
2. each with own appointed tasks;
3. for a prolonged or indefinite period of time;
4. using some form of discipline and control
5. suspected of the commission of serious criminal offences;
6. operating on an international level;
7. using violence or other means suitable for intimidation;
8. using commercial or business-like structures
9. engaged in money laundering
10.exerting influence on politics, on the media, public administration, judicial
authorities, or the economy;
11.determined by the pursuit of profit and/or power.” (Appendix C of K.4-
udvalget, 1995).2
2. The official English version of the eleven criteria was not available. Consequently this quotation is based on
an unofficial translation from the Danish version.
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