Crime and Terrorism

Peter Grabosky, Michael Stohl

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781849200325, 9781849200318
• eBook ISBN: 9781446242025
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Terrorism and crime are two areas of knowledge that have traditionally been looked at independently. In this timely and original text, two of the leading authors in the field provide a clear and thorough look at terrorism from a criminological perspective.

 

Integrating the latest research, the book explores the motives of criminals and terrorists, the causes of crime and terrorism and the impact of the law and the legal system. Central to this exploration, the authors examine the nexus between criminal and terrorist organizations, and the commonalities and differences between them and what this means for public policy and safety and security within states.

 

Cross-cultural and international in perspective, this is a fresh and original text that will appeal to undergraduates, academics, and researchers in criminology, politics, international relations, sociology, communication and cultural studies.

 

 

Compact Criminology is an exciting series that invigorates and challenges the international field of criminology. 

 

Books in the series are short, authoritative, innovative assessments of emerging issues in criminology and criminal justice – offering critical, accessible introductions to important topics.  They take a global rather than a narrowly national approach.  Eminently readable and first-rate in quality, each book is written by a leading specialist.

 

Compact Criminology provides a new type of tool for teaching, learning and research, one that is flexible and light on its feet. The series addresses fundamental needs in the growing and increasingly differentiated field of criminology.

ONE

introduction: terrorism and terrorists, crime and criminals

Introduction

Organized crime and terrorism are both ‘hot button’ issues. Not only are they high on the policy agendas of most developed countries, they have become a part of popular culture. But they are not fiction. They can also be real threats to free societies. And, despite their fundamental differences, they have much in common.

This book looks at terrorism through the lens of criminology. In so doing, it seeks to compare two types of illicit activity: terrorism and ‘conventional’ organized crime. It is surprising, yet understandable, that the explicit comparison of crime (especially organized crime) and terrorism has received relatively little scholarly attention (for exceptions, see Levi, 2006; Morselli, 2009). It is surprising because, as we shall see, terrorism and crime are similar in some respects, as are terrorists and criminals.¹ It is understandable because areas of scholarly inquiry have become increasingly specialized. There are journals and research centers and conferences devoted to organized crime, and others to terrorism, but relatively few combining the two. It is our intention to make a modest contribution towards redressing this imbalance.

We apologize to those of our readers who are seeking normative guidance, or ideological reinforcement, from this book. While both of us seek a world in which we are optimally free to live our lives, as far as possible free of constraints imposed by terrorists, criminals and the state, we do not propose to mimic a morality play, depicting champions of truth and justice arrayed against forces of evil. Rather, our approach is one of analytical detachment. As you will see, this is easier said than done.

Plan of the book

This chapter will define terrorism and organized crime, and then we explore the degree of overlap of the two. It will then set out a number of theories that provide an explanatory framework for the two types of activity in question. Next we introduce two levels of analysis: the organizational and the individual, with a view towards explaining factors contributing to the genesis, the ascendancy, and the decline of illicit organizations, and the recruitment, the intensification of commitment, and the desistance of individual members.

Chapter 2 summarizes descriptive material on terrorism and organized crime, discussing strengths and weaknesses of available data, and observable trends. It identifies forms of terrorism and of organized crime, and will explore domestic and transnational organized crime as a threat to national and regional security.

Chapter 3 demonstrates that terrorism is hardly the monopoly of political dissidents, but can also be an instrument of political power used by the state. States may engage in terrorism, both domestically and internationally. States may also engage in other forms of criminality, at home and abroad. Chapter 3 also explores the role of corruption, and the links between state actors on the one hand, and criminals and terrorists on the other, and discusses state support for criminal and terrorist activities, both foreign and domestic.

Chapter 4 examines the intersections of terrorist and criminal organizations. Each may engage in similar activity (such as money laundering) to mask their location and activity. They may relate symbiotically, as when they exchange drugs for weapons. Terrorist groups may engage in conventional criminal activity in furtherance of fund raising. Criminal organizations may engage in terrorist activity such as assassination, and can engage in ideologically motivated violence. Chapter 4 also looks at the adaptive behaviour of illicit organizations. The fluid environment within which terrorist and organized crime groups operate provides both threats and opportunities. The development of networked organizational forms by both terrorist and conventional criminal organizations has enhanced both their capacity and their resiliency. Both types of organization exploit emerging technologies, including digital technologies, for use as instruments, targets, or incidentally, for purposes such as record keeping.

Chapter 5 considers state responses to terrorism and to organized crime, and observes notable successes and failures in each domain. In so doing, we discuss the relative merits of ‘war fighting’ versus criminal justice. We also explore the consequences of strategies that rely on public mobilization, such as the creation of moral panics, and the manipulation of fear. The role of the media in the coverage of crime and terrorism will also be examined.

After a brief summary of the previous chapters, Chapter 6 explores the factors contributing to the decline of terrorist and conventional criminal organizations, and the desistance of their members. We discuss the role of communities and community policing, and offer some conclusions about how to manage organized crime and terrorism effectively, while minimizing encroachments upon human rights and civil liberties.

Definitions

The terms ‘crime’ and ‘terrorism’ mean different things to different people. The old adage (however ill-founded) that ‘one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter’ hints at this.

In the history of humankind, crime is a relatively modern concept. In prehistoric times, people killed each other, stole each others’ property, and did other nasty things. If the victim or victims were strong enough, they responded in a retaliatory manner. Over time, practices of dispute resolution developed, enabling aggrieved parties to seek restitution. Rules of behaviour were unwritten, and what we now refer to as social control was informal.

With the passage of time and the corresponding evolution of societies, rules of behaviour became more formal. And so it was that specific acts were prohibited by law, and those who engaged in them became liable to punishment.

The sociologist Richard Quinney (1970) observed that what is deemed to be crime is not frozen in time or place. He is not the first to have done so; Edwin H. Sutherland, for example, made a similar assertion in his and Donald Cressey’s Principles of Criminology. Crime is a social and political construct. In other words, what is authoritatively and officially defined as crime will vary from time to time and from place to place, depending on social and political circumstances. It may sound somewhat glib to suggest that crime is whatever a government may declare it to be, but this is indeed the case. A few brief examples will illustrate this:

• In 19th century Australia, there existed a thriving whaling industry. Today, it is a criminal offence merely to harass a whale in Australian waters.
• In the People’s Republic of China, but nowhere else, it is an offence to advocate the independence of Tibet.
• In the United States, from 1920 to 1933, it was illegal to sell or to purchase an alcoholic beverage. Since then, it has been generally permitted by law, although some cities and counties are still legally ‘dry’. There is, of course, a minimum age for the purchase of alcohol, although this too has varied over time and from place to place.
• Citizens of Sweden commit a crime under Swedish law if they pay for sex anywhere in the world – including in Australia, where the sex industry is legal and regulated.

One might suggest that some behaviors, at least in modern times, are universally deemed to be criminal (homicide, for example). But jurisdictions make exceptions in order to excuse homicides occurring in certain circumstances, such as self-defense. And some governments authorize themselves to engage in homicide: as in the execution of criminals. Others condone extrajudicial execution by state authorities. This practice is common in India, and the euphemism used there to refer to deliberate police killings is ‘encounters’ (Belur 2009).

Organized crime

Organized crime is a term that has been, and continues to be, used very loosely. There are literally scores of definitions of organized crime, and nothing approaching a universal consensus on what it is (see http://www.organized-crime.de/OCDEF1.htm#kvl). Some definitions are based on organizational goals, such as profit. Others focus on the properties of organizations, such as persistence and durability. Some refer to structure (i.e. ‘centrally controlled, formal structure’) but as we will see, the nature of organizational life is changing, and the criminal organizations that thrived a half century ago bear little resemblance to those that are active today. Other definitions emphasize methods or tools used by organized criminals to achieve their ends, such as violence or bribery. Others still, focus on what some criminal organizations do, such as drug trafficking and loan sharking. For our purposes, we shall refer to organized crime as criminal activity by groups of three or more individuals who engage in criminal activities collaboratively, with a degree of structure and coordination.

Terrorism

Terrorism, too, can be a slippery term. The definition of terrorism that we prefer is the following: ‘An act or threat of violence to create fear and/or compliant behavior in a victim or wider audience for the purpose of achieving political ends’ (Stohl, 1988: 3; emphasis added. The words are key to understanding terrorism).

A number of terrorist groups in various locations around the globe have been active since the turn of the century. Most prominent among these are the various Islamic fundamentalist groups such as the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Al Qaeda in the Middle East, Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan, Jamaa Islamiya (JI) in Indonesia, and Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines. Until their demise in 2009, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam sought independence from Sri Lanka. In Europe, the Irish Republican Army and its offshoots have been less active since the 9/11 attacks created a hostile environment for political violence in western democracies. Similarly the Basque separatist group ETA declared a permanent ceasefire in 2006, although occasional violent incidents were recorded in 2009.

Of course, terrorism existed long before September 11, 2001; classical and biblical references abound. And one should note that the acts in question need not exclusively be the work of individuals or dissident groups. Indeed, the very term terrorism emerged in the aftermath of the French Revolution to refer to the repressive practices of the state. The Soviet Union during the Stalin era (1922–53), and Germany under Hitler (1933–45), were terrorist states. State terrorism can also occur across national frontiers. The 1983 bombing of visiting South Korean officials in Rangoon was the work of North Korean government agents. Libyan government operatives were responsible for the bombing of an airliner (Pan Am 103) over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. French secret service agents sank the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour in July 1985. Pakistan has sponsored terrorist attacks in Indian Kashmir.

Most if not all acts of terrorism entail some type of crime. An act or threat of violence is an assault – an offence at common law. Such acts that inflict loss of life are, of course, homicides. Malicious damage to property, regardless of motive, is a crime almost anywhere. So why then do states enact specific laws that make terrorism a crime? We will revisit this question briefly at the end of this chapter, and again in Chapter 5.

The crime–terror interface

As we will see in subsequent chapters, terrorism and organized crime may overlap, and their protagonists may occupy the same playing field (Makarenko, 2004). The intersection of crime and terrorism may take the following forms:

• Terrorists may engage in conventional criminality to support themselves and their operations. Al Qaeda has engaged in credit card fraud; Abu Sayyaf in ransom kidnapping. Profits from cigarette smuggling in the United States have gone to support Hezbollah.
• Organized criminals may seek to coerce and intimidate governments and their citizens for political ends. The assassinations of Sicilian investigating judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992 were more than just Mafia ‘hits,’ the massive explosions themselves constituted a political statement, and were obviously intended to discourage further investigative activity.
• Ordinary criminals may become increasingly politicized, and eventually convert to terrorism. Jose Padilla, a US citizen convicted after 9/11 of aiding terrorists, was, in his youth, a member of a Chicago street gang. Mohammed Bouyeri, the assassin of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was a petty criminal before he turned to political violence in 2004.
• Terrorists may abandon their political agendas and turn to conventional crime (Rosenthal, 2008). The term ‘fighters turned felons’ (Curtis and Karacan, 2002) captures this nicely. One of the largest bank robberies in UK history was allegedly committed to finance the retirement of IRA activists in 2004 following the peace accords in Northern Ireland.
• Terrorist and criminal organizations may exchange knowledge and commodities for mutual benefit. Southern Thai criminals sell weapons to insurgents. Mincheva and Gurr (2010) refer to ‘marriages of convenience’ such as the relationship between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and Colombian drug dealers. JI in Indonesia literally married into the criminal class, with a senior member marrying a major arms merchant to ensure continuing supply of arms.
• Some hybrid organizations may engage in both terrorist and criminal activity. The Indian organized crime syndicate D-Company is alleged to have been involved in drug trafficking, money laundering, and a bombing in Mumbai that killed 257 people in 1993.

The crime–terror interface is not new, but it has certainly received a lot of attention lately. The term ‘Narco-terrorism’ was coined as far back as the 1980s to describe some of the tactics of Latin American drug cartels. The Nicaraguan Contras engaged in cocaine trafficking to support their insurgency at roughly the same time (see Cohen, 1996).

Some controversy surrounds the issue of convergence: whether those terrorists who take on criminal traits for purposes of terrorism (either to commit the terrorist act or support themselves from day to day) actually become criminals – and vice versa. There are two schools of thought in this debate. One, involving Stern (2003: 215, 251), Makarenko (2004) and Dishman (2005), argues that convergence does exist and can remain permanent. The other, involving Schmid (1996) and Hutchinson and O’Malley (2007) argues that terrorism and crime are very different in their motivations and that therefore convergence is at best very infrequent. To the extent that interaction takes place, it is simply an alliance of convenience.

Theories

One of the goals of social science is to develop an explanatory framework that will enable us to understand changes over time in social and political phenomena – in this case organized crime, and terrorism. Our analysis will embrace four theoretical perspectives. The most comprehensive will be what criminologists call routine activity theory. We will also draw upon differential association theory and strain theory to explain the behaviour of individual criminals and terrorists. Finally, we will seek to explain the behaviour of criminal and terrorist organizations in terms of resource dependency theory.

Routine activity theory

One of the most useful criminological theories, developed by Cohen and Felson (1979) is called routine activity theory. In essence, a terrorist act, or crime in general, may be explained by the conjunction of three factors: 1) a supply of motivated offenders; 2) the availability of suitable targets or victims, and 3) the absence of capable guardianship (in other words, surveillance, vigilance, or someone to ‘mind the store’).

1 Motives

A simplistic comparison of the motives driving organized criminals with those that inspire terrorists would suggest that organized criminals are in it for the money and that people become terrorists because they want to change the world (or at least their small part of it). Conventional criminal organizations are business organizations; terrorist groups are political organizations. This may be true, but only to a point. Life is complex, and individuals are rarely driven by a single objective. Motives for criminal or terrorist activity, or for antisocial behavior in general, are varied. Both criminals and terrorists may harbor a number of these.

The most common of these motives are greed, lust, rebellion, indignation, and the desire for personal security, power, revenge, excitement, or respect. In some cases, intellectual challenge may also come into play. Outsmarting a powerful adversary may be gratifying in itself.

Ch...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Terrorism and Terrorists, Crime and Criminals
• 2 Dimensions of the Problem
• 3 State Terrorism and State Crime: The Dark Side of the State
• 4 Intersections of Terrorist and Criminal Organizations
• 5 Responding to Terrorism and Organized Crime: Local, National and International Dimensions
• 6 Conclusions: Managing Crime and Terrorism
• References
• Index