Transnational Crime and Criminal Justice by Marinella Marmo Nerida Chazal

Author:Marinella Marmo, Nerida Chazal [Marinella Marmo, Nerida Chazal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781412919258
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2016-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Despite the strong negative voices at the international level on this topic, it is important to question more closely the nature of the threat from organized crime and to consider whether there might be logical reasons, as well as clear incentives, for organized crime to emerge, survive and prosper. While there is clear evidence in many cases that it can lead to violence, intimidation and exploitation, this is not universally the case or at least true all the time. On the side of those who supply illicit goods, say drugs, there may be economic opportunities associated with the cultivation and production of those drugs that cannot be met or matched by governments or the private sector. Serious policy on illicit drugs should be attentive to the circumstances around particular illicit markets, in particular the situation of its poorest participants. The ability to look closely leads to a more discriminating view of the effects of organized crime in its different forms. It means that there may be ‘good’ or at least ‘better’ forms of organized crime, as well as ‘bad’ or ‘worse’ forms (Felbab-Brown 2009). Once this calculation is made, it allows sensible policy to focus on the more harmful forms and to consider how, if at all, the ‘better’ forms might be replaced rather than destroyed outright.

Differences of interest and values, therefore, can affect the degree of global consensus about the harmfulness of many transnational organized crime forms. Another factor limiting how we can reach a threat assessment of these diverse activities of course lies in their often covert nature. Those engaged in such activities, whether as perpetrators or as ‘victims,’ are often reluctant to report what they are doing to law enforcement or other government agencies. Consumers of ecstasy in nightclubs in Western cities are unlikely to hand themselves or their dealers over to the police, for example. Those engaged in counterfeiting DVDs or CDs are also not inclined to report themselves to the authorities. So obtaining accurate measurement of the extent of particular organized crimes is necessarily very difficult – ‘guesstimations’ are often the only option (see Case Study 6.1).

However, the vagueness of such assessments is sometimes obscured in the policy judgements drawn and acted upon in relation to them. In this regard, they might be said to resemble other forms of ‘intelligence’ assessments – they are never complete in terms of the data needed for highly accurate assessment. In an area like money laundering, for example, there are all sorts of obstacles to assessing how much ‘dirty money’ is laundered by organized crime groups. Relying upon such estimates, therefore, is fraught with risk.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.