Organized Crime and Terrorist Networks

Vincenzo Ruggiero

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429786983
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Terrorism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This collection explores organized crime and terror networks and the points at which they intersect. It analyses the close relationships between these criminalities, the prevalence and ambiguity of this nexus, the technological elements facilitating it, and the financial aspects embedded in this criminal partnership.

Organized Crime and Terrorist Networks is the outcome of empirical research, seminars, workshops and interviews carried out by a multinational consortium of researchers within 'TAKEDOWN', a Horizon 2020 project funded by the European Commission. The consortium's objective was to examine the perspectives, requirements and misgivings of front-line practitioners operating in the areas of organized crime and terrorism. The chapters collected in this volume are the outcome of such analytical efforts. The topics addressed include the role of Information and Communication Technology in contemporary criminal organizations, terrorism financing, online transnational criminality, identity crime, the crime-terror nexus and tackling the nexus at supranational level.

This book offers a compelling contribution to scholarship on organized crime and terrorism, and considers possible directions for future research. It will be of much interest to students and researchers engaged in studies of criminology, criminal justice, crime control and prevention, organized crime, terrorism, political violence, and cybercrime.

1 Introduction

Vincenzo Ruggiero

When in 1613 Cervantes wrote a delectable short story about a criminal organization operating in Seville, he was unaware that only a few centuries later would the debate on organized crime finally spark off and, currently still rampant, take numerous competing directions. His Rinconete and Cortadillo are independent thieves who, in Seville, realize that their independence is at risk. In the town, Mr Monipodio requires the payment of a duty from all those operating in illegal activities and markets (Cervantes, 1952). Monipodio is fervidly religious and well connected with important people, including law enforcers, while his ‘soldiers’ deliver punishment against ‘unregistered’ lone criminals or on behalf of customers who intend to eliminate enemies or competitors. Rinconete and Cortadillo are astounded by the careless manner in which justice is administered in Seville, and fearful that the members of that ‘infamous academy’ would make their work more difficult and dangerous, they leave and seek elsewhere a more apposite environment for their professional development (Ruggiero, 2003).

Cervantes was also unaware that several of the characteristics he highlighted would provide as many angles for analyses of organized crime to come. Cultural aspects, for instance, have been addressed, among others, by Hess (1973), Hobsbawm (1971) and Sciascia (2002), entrepreneurship by Arlacchi (1983), Santino and La Fiura (1990) and Scalia (2016), flexibility and professionalism by Hobbs (1995, 2013), Albanese (2014) and Paoli (2014). Organized crime as power syndicate features in the work of Block (1991), Antonopoulos and Papanicolaou (2018), von Lampe (2016), Dino and Pepino (2008), Abadinsky (1990), Einstein and Amir (1999). More general analyses are found in Holmes (2016), Sergi (2017) and most recently by Hall (2018). Finally, organized crime as illegal governance has been dealt with by Gambetta (1992), Varese (2010), Campana and Varese (2018).

Readers are kindly asked not to put this book down straight away, because this brief introduction will not display yet another endless review of the literature that is normally reiterated in every work devoted to organized crime. Nor will this book attempt to formulate yet a new ‘redefinition’ of the subject matter, as such an attempt would be churlish in the face of a phenomenon that constantly evolves and changes according to time, context and the politico-economic philosophy prevailing in it. The notions of organized crime discussed in this volume are those that lend themselves to a comparative examination with the findings of an empirical research carried out between 2017 and 2018 (more about the research later).

The area of terrorism is similarly crowded, and a proper review of the literature would consider, first of all the Bible, then the Jacobins, Fichte, Burke (Ruggiero, 2019). Terrorist attacks feature, in the form of state assassinations, in the guidelines released by the CIA for the benefit of its operational members in 1953 (Stevenson, 2019). While interest in state terrorism appears to be declining, those focusing on the current times may want to examine the work of Sageman (2017), Schmid (2011), Gerges (2015), Badiou (2016), Bibes (2001) and many others. Those fascinated by the relationship between religion and terror could scan Armstrong (2014) or Juergensmeyer, Kitts and Jerryson (2013). Terrorism interpreted as the reaction to the invasion and the secularization of the sacred (Ginzburg, 2015) can be found in Balibar (2015, 2018) or in Eagleton (2005; 2018), while for purely secular perspective one needs to look at all those political theories that link radical social change with the use of collective violence, those, in other words, which see belligerence as a salvific midwife that helps the delivery of a new millenarian order.

But again, the literature on terrorism, in this book, will only be referred to when the views collected in our research are compared with other perspectives and findings.

Takedown

The objective of the TAKEDOWN Project was to examine the perspectives, requirements and misgivings of front-line practitioners operating in the areas of organized crime and terrorism. Funded by the European Commission, TAKEDOWN focused its research on the activities, the causes of, and responses to, these two types of criminality, recording the views of social workers, teachers, law enforcers and other experts. The TAKEDOWN Consortium was formed of teams based in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland and the UK (for the methodologies adopted in the research process see Chapter 2). Initially, some members of the consortium were somewhat reluctant to undertake a joint examination of organized crime and terrorism, the two being regarded as distinct phenomena. In fact, to analyse them together was seen by some as an example of the questionable practice to include under the same heading everything one may dislike. Later, it was unanimously accepted that ‘hybrids’, namely organizations that possess the traits of both organized crime and terrorism, were worth investigating with a view, on the one hand, to ascertaining to what extent such overlap between the two manifests itself and, on the other, to contesting their very existence.

On completion of the empirical research, members of the consortium addressed some specific aspects that had not received sufficient attention in the process, expanding their analysis into areas only alluded to by our informants and/or touched upon by other studies. The chapters collected in this volume are the outcome of such analytical efforts.

Chapter 2 presents and discusses the findings of the Takedown research into the perceptions of front-line practitioners around organized crime and terrorist networks. The material collected in the research is then compared with other findings and previous analyses produced on the same topics. Chapter 3 deals with hybrids, noting that the constitution of networks involving conventional criminals and terrorists is often problematic, thus making a joint analysis of crime and terror theoretically challenging. Chapter 4 offers ideal-typical models of organized crime and terrorism against developments in the socio-political and technological spheres. Online crime is the focus of Chapter 5, which examines the role of information and communication technology in the activities of modern criminal organizations. With Chapter 6, the book then moves on to consider low-tech forms of terrorism, implying that advanced technology is not a constant feature of contemporary attacks. Chapter 7 returns to the crime-terror nexus, while Chapter 8 proposes an understanding of such nexus through a dynamic modeling approach. How organized crime and terrorism share financing strategies is the object of the analysis offered in Chapter 9, which is followed by an examination, in Chapter 10, of the strategies to tackle both at the supranational level. Finally, Chapter 11 shows how technology shapes new criminal actors (identity fraudsters) who defy traditional typologies of offending behaviour.

Pleasure, evil and technology

It may be unnecessary to provide readers with guidelines as to how the following chapters could be interpreted, because the chapters speak for themselves, informed as they are by their own logic and redacted with their own vocabulary. What may be useful, however, is to offer some supplementary observations intended to foreground a number of general concepts which are hidden, or at times implied, in the individual contributions.

For ancient philosophy, prudence enables people to become virtuous (Aristotle, 1995), while the nascent ‘science’ of economics turned it into a modality to become successful (Wootton, 2018). Western thought managed to locate utility, profit and power, which the Greeks and Romans regarded as debased values, among the priorities of human action. The logic of endless pursuit of pleasure and wealth accompanied this slow mutation, with virtue becoming a pure tool for their achievement. Most criminological concepts took shape on the background of this shift: for example, the endless pursuit of wealth was associated with anomie, competition with relative deprivation, utility with differential association, and power with routine activity theory. Pleasure, one could argue, is a distinctive trait characterizing the crimes of the powerful, particularly if we consider that it is projected into the future, in the sense that what is illegally obtained guarantees a succession of future pleasure (Ruggiero, 2015). Maximizing wealth and profits, which is a dogma in economics, is also an injunction in crime, where instrumental reasoning of an economic nature constantly migrates to inspire predatory conduct.

It is in this light that the alarm around transnational organized crime should be read. The Council of Europe (2014), for example, attempted to identify the social and economic damage caused by this type of criminality, highlighting the way in which it benefits from certain legal loopholes, it uses sophisticated methods to conceal activities and the proceeds of crime, it take advantage of globalization and of information and communication technologies (ICTs). In brief, transnational organized crime is accused of following an economic logic and the instrumental reasoning of entrepreneurs. A practical extension of dominant philosophies, the obscenity of transnational organized crime finds its ideal incubation in official narratives and justifications. Hence, perhaps, the ambiguity of institutional concerns about this type of criminality, which can be attributed to any economic actor, in the illicit as well as in the licit sphere. The Council of Europe worries about the negative impact on national economies, the money lost through tax evasion, the semi-legality of certain occupational sectors, all of which ‘undermine the credibility and competitiveness of a state’s financial and commercial actors’ (ibid.: 9). But are these concerns addressed to specific criminal organizations or to the current routine of legitimate markets?

The confusion is compounded when priorities are set in the realm of institutional responses. It is asserted, in this respect, that the main problem does not appear to be a lack of legal instruments, but rather their implementation in practice. Detection, investigation and prosecution are said to be hampered by the very nature of the crimes being committed, leaving us uncertain whether the subject matter is the economy itself or some criminal group operating in it. Mystification also arises when cooperation with the private sector is advocated, begging the question whether the public sector is, in fact, among the perpetrators. To its credit, the Council of Europe clarifies in a few lines that the type of criminality it is concerned about enjoys the support of a ‘wide range of professionals, for example lawyers, accountants, financial advisers, corrupt officials, judges, politicians and chemists. Without the support of these professionals, transnational organized crime would not succeed’ (ibid.: 18). The question remains, however, whether this clarification falls in the ‘bad apple’ logic or whether it contains a more radical critique of market mechanisms.

There is another important variable that springs up with increasing frequency, and this is technology. For instance, the debate on cybercrime prompts questions such as: has this type of crime changed the features of conventional crime? To what extent is it organized? Is it mainly perpetrated by career criminals or by white-collar individuals and groups? The substantial rise of cybercrime may or may not be simultaneous with the decline of other conventional criminal activity (Levi et al., 2017). However, the development of technology encourages further questions, perhaps of a more interesting nature.

Access to technology creates a wide range of opportunities for extremely diverse individuals and groups. The skills perfected through its use have no relationship with specific subcultures, criminal learning processes, social disadvantage, labelling or symbolic interactions. They are not acquired within distinct enclaves where techniques of neutralization are elaborated. Rather, they are a new manifestation of a participatory spirit that appears to nullify differences and inclinations, bringing to the fore what phenomenologists would describe as the life worlds of ev...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Organized crime and terrorist networks
• 3 Hybrids: on the crime-terror nexus
• 4 The online crime-terror nexus: using booter services (stressers) to weaponize data?
• 5 The role of information and communication technology (ICT) in modern criminal organizations
• 6 The rise of low-tech attacks in Europe
• 7 Global system dynamics in the relationships between organized crime and terrorist groups
• 8 Understanding the crime-terrorism nexus through a dynamic modelling approach
• 9 Terrorism financing and the crime-terror relationships as challenges for security in Europe
• 10 Tackling the nexus at the supranational level
• 11 Identity crime in the UK
• Index