ABSTRACT
This chapter locates the birth of Serious and Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) in the broader context of transnationalization. It focuses on observational data from several countries and describes the turn towards strategic criminal-intelligence-led policing, one of the most salient features of the new police architecture. The chapter explores questions about the degree of fit between new policing structures like SOCA and the reality that they seek to police. It describes some of the effectiveness criteria that accompany these organizational changes and raises questions about their appropriateness. The chapter also explores the degree to which the new architectures of policing really correspond to the problems of so-called transnational organized crime. It examines policy makers across the world to take seriously the findings of ethnographers and other criminologists in making decisions about the governance of serious organized crime. Police intelligence analysts use a range of information to inform discussions of strategy, but this is largely restricted to police sector data.
