ABSTRACT
The law enforcement networks discussed in the previous chapter may potentially deploy intelligence techniques against any kind of illicit activity, from the minor to the major. However, the growth in the significance of intelligence-led policing has coincided with increased debate (and some might say, panic) about organised crime. This concept has been used to describe the more serious criminal phenomena in the US at least since the 1920s, in the UK it has a more recent history. The term itself has not been used (and therefore required no definition) in the relevant UK legislation but, at the operational level, ‘serious and organised crime’ is now a muchused phrase. The other significant development since the official end of the Cold War has been the rapid emergence of ‘transnational organised crime’ as a phenomenon that is presented as a threat to the very security of states. This chapter examines the major parameters of the debate concerning the definition of organised crime with particular reference to the issue of the interaction between law enforcement and those activities it seeks to control. It is important to consider the complex nature of the organisation of illegal activities in order to challenge the fragile basis for panics generated around the activities of criminal ‘godfathers’ and, though this can seem overly semantic to practitioners, it is important for them also because how the ‘problem’ is defined and measured determines what, if anything, can be done about it (cf. Levi, 1998).
