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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 1:50 am
Time: 1:50 am
Results for organized crime prevention
1 results foundAuthor: Morselli, Carlo Title: The Mobility of Criminal Groups Summary: The present discussion paper will review evidence from past research that offers alternative themes and theories regarding the shifts and patterns in the mobility of criminal groups. Our main objective is to identify push and pull factors that will help us understand how and why criminal groups, organizations, or general organized crime patterns are present across a variety of settings (i.e., geographical locations, criminal markets, and legitimate industries). Push factors refer to forces which drive criminal groups from a setting. Pull factors refer to forces which draw criminal groups to a setting. Aside from reviewing past research in search of such factors, we also apply the general understanding that emerges from our analysis to assessing journalistic case studies that addressed organized crime threats in Canada during recent years. The concluding section of this report identifies the key issues that must be addressed within this area and provides a series of recommendations that law-enforcement officials and policy makers should find relevant for their own experiences with this particular problem. A distinction is made between contexts in which offenders organize around available opportunities (the strategic context) and contexts in which opportunities create organized offenders (the emergent context). The most general statement that can be formulated from the present exercise is that the opportunities matter more than the group itself. What we will demonstrate in this report is that the problems concerning geographical locations, criminal markets, and legitimate industries that are vulnerable to organized crime are persistent and stable over time. Groups that seize such opportunities, on the other hand, are transient and more than often short-lived. Thus, preventing the environmental problems that persist over time and from one criminal group to the next is a more effective approach than repressing one group at a time. This general guideline is supported by past research. Our assessment maintains that while many claim that criminal organizations are intentionally or strategically mobilizing themselves to seize opportunities in various geographical locations across the world, empirical demonstrations supporting such claims are lacking, with most restricted to anecdotal illustrations. Empirical research in this area is rare and the few studies that do provide some level of systematic data generally fall in a less strategic image of criminal groups. Instead, criminal groups are the product of offenders’ adaptations to the constraints and opportunities surrounding them. Such groups are self-organizing and emergent in settings where there are considerable vulnerabilities to exploit across a variety of cross-border, cross-market, and cross-industry contexts. In short, it appears that there is plenty of hype and little demonstration in favour of the more sensationalist strategic criminal organization. In turn, there is less hype and growing evidence for the less sensationalist emergent organized crime scenario. This research review probes the multitude of past studies on criminal market settings, the ethnic composition of criminal networks, criminogenic conditions in legitimate settings, and general research on criminal mobility patterns. The principal push and pull factors identified often overlap across each area of research, with some relating to specific contexts. Details: Ottawa: Organized Crime Division, Law Enforcement and Policy Branch, Public Safety Canada, 2010. 47p. Source: Internet Resource: Report no. 004, 2010: Accessed February 8, 2013 at: http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2012/sp-ps/PS4-91-2010-eng.pdf Year: 2010 Country: Canada URL: http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2012/sp-ps/PS4-91-2010-eng.pdf Shelf Number: 127555 Keywords: Criminal NetworksOffender MobilityOrganized Crime (Canada)Organized Crime Prevention |