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

NSfK’s 40. forskerseminar, Espoo, Finland 1998
crimes or offenses as referred to in Article 1, even if that person does not take part in the
actual execution of the activity” (Joint Action, 1998: article 2).
This definition is intended to reconcile three different legal traditions: the continental
tradition according to which it is possible and desirable to punish participation in the
activities of a criminal organization, the Anglo-American tradition which views a conspiracy
as punishable and according to which an agreement between two or more persons is sufficient
for indictment, and the Scandinavian tradition of far-reaching regulations on participation and
attempt, which are general in nature and not specifically directed against criminal
organizations or criminal conspiracies (Rådet for Den Europæiske Union -
Generalsekretariatet, 1997). Depending on how this joint definition and the obligation to
make it a criminal offence to particiapate in a criminal organization is implementet in national
legislation, this way of criminalizing membership of an organization will be a crucial
departure from legal traditions in Scandinavia.
But the definition of illegal participation in a criminal organization also expresses an
attempt to include the participation of - for example - an attorney or abookkeeper, in the
activities of an organization, when those involved act intentional and with the understanding
that their participation helps promote the criminal organization.
Why Organized Crime as a Joint Concept?
In both of these EU definitions emphasis is placed on the organizational aspects of organized
crime. This becomes clear when, in its Joint Action, the Council for Legal and Internal
Affairs first defines a criminal organization and then defines how participation in such an
organization is to be viewed. It is also clear in the way the various features of organized
crime are balanced. In the Council’s legal definition the organizational aspects and
seriousness of the criminal action are obligatory elements and in the K4 Committee’s eleven
characteristics the organizational attributes, together with the seriousness of the crimes and
the motives, are also obligatory.
When the emphasis is placed on organizational relationships and on the seriousness of the
crime, the result is definitions or categorizations that are unable to distinguish between
organized crime and other forms of collective criminality that are organized, such as gang
crime, white collar crime, and organizational crime. Thus, there are no attempts to identify
distinctive features of organized crime. Instead of defining organized crime as an
independent and distinctive form of crime, organized crime becomes a catch-all term for a
number of serious crimes that already have other designations.
This conceptualization of organized crime as an overriding category which, in principle,
can include all forms of collective crimes and organizations, results in a heterogeneous
classification system. The category of organized crime comes to encompass motorcycle clubs
such as the Hell’s Angels and the Bandidos, but also corporate embezzlers and organized
fraud against EU funds. Such a broad classification system tends to be devoid of specific
meaning or, in any event, of comprehension. Instead, the term organized crime is reduced to
an evaluation of the seriousness and organizational features of certain types of crime.
Organized crime as a concept is inappropriate and should actually be avoided, since it
contains the linguistic possibility of several meanings. First of all, it is difficult to define and
delineate organized crime from other types of crime such as professional crime, criminal
subcultures, career crime, gang crime, criminal networks, criminal conspiracies,
organizational crime, corporate crime, and white collar crime (Bay, 1995). Secondly, it is
difficult to distinguish between crime that is organized and organized crime, i.e. between a
common sense meaning of organized crime and a narrower legal or criminological meaning.
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