ABSTRACT
A systematic investigation into the activities for tackling organized crime shows that we need to understand it better and this means understanding its key features today, in particular its transnational dimension, as well as describing its specific local features. If the perceived threat of organized crime, and of TOC in particular, has increased in importance on the agenda of policy-makers and social scientists in the last two decades, there is as yet little consensus over the definitions, the key characteristics and the appropriate models which should be used for controlling them (see Edwards and Gill 2002b). Organized crime is a very complex phenomenon: it affects the social, economic, political and cultural spheres and the attempts to provide an adequate definition of this concept have given rise to a very controversial debate.
