Organized Crime: Culture, Markets and Policies / Edition 1

by Dina Siegel, Hans Nelen

Overview

The term “global organized crime” is often used to refer to worldwide illegitimate activities of criminal groups and networks and is associated with the so-called “globalization process”. Although it can not be denied that due to economic, technological, political and cultural developments, borders have disappeared or changed, markets have extended, mobility and communication facilities have improved, it would be a major fallacy to study organized crime and its containment solely from a global perspective. The central premise of this book is that we need more in-depth, empirically funded, knowledge on organized crime in specific situational contexts, rather than trying to predict how organized crime might develop throughout the world.

The fifteen contributions in the book deal with various aspects of organized crime (drugs, diamonds, human trafficking, eco-crime, conflict resolution, underground banking, crime facilitators) in various parts of the world (Sicily, Sinai, the US, Quebec, Amsterdam, Antwerp, tropical rain forests in Africa and Asia and so on). Distinguished scholars pay attention to historical and contemporary manifestations of organized crime, the symbiotic relationship between legitimate and illegitimate activities, and innovative, dual strategies that have been developed to contain and prevent these serious forms of crime. They explore different theoretical arguments from the perspective of their own disciplines, which include sociology, criminology, political science and anthropology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780387097107
Publisher:	Springer New York
Publication date:	08/08/2008
Series:	Studies of Organized Crime Series , #7
Edition description:	2008
Pages:	238
Product dimensions:	9.21(w) x 6.14(h) x 0.51(d)

About the Author

Dina Siegel is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Criminology and Criminal Law, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She studied sociology and social anthropology at Tel Aviv University in Israel and obtained her PhD in cultural anthropology at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She has studied and published several articles on post-Soviet organized crime, terrorism, human trafficking, criminal activities in diamond sector, and on drug policies in the Netherlands. In 2003 she edited (together with Van de Bunt and Zaitch) Global Organized Crime. Trends and Developments (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004). She conducted ethnographic research on Russian-speaking criminals in the Netherlands, Russian biznes in the Netherlands (2005, Meulenhoff).

Hans Nelen is a criminologist and has a law degree. Between 1986 and the beginning of 2001 he was employed as a senior researcher and research supervisor at the Research and Documentation Centre of the Ministry of Justice in the Netherlands (WODC), mainly investigating drug crime, fraud and corporate crim. Between 2001 and 2006 he was a senior lecturer and senior researcher at the Institute of Criminology of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Since January 1 2007 Nelen has been working as a Professor of Criminology at Maastricht University (UM). During the last decade Nelen published several books and articles on a variety of criminological subjects, i.e. corruption and fraud, dilemmas facing lawyers and notaries, the administrative approach to organized crime, the proceeds-of-crime approach, evaluation of legislation, and evaluation of law enforcement activities.

Table of Contents

Dina Siegel and Hans Nelen – Introduction 1 Criminal groups and activities Historical transformations Anton Blok – Reflections on the Sicilian Mafia: Peripheries and their Impact on Centres 11 Letizia Paoli – The Decline of the Italian Mafia 27 Emanuel Marx – Hashish Smuggling by Bedouin in South Sinai 55 Transnational flows Sheldon X. Zhang and Samuel Pineda – Corruption as a Causal Factor in Human Trafficking 77 Stefano Becucci – New Players in an Old Game: the Sex Market in Italy 113 Tihomir Bezlov and Philip Gounev – The vehicle Theft Market in Bulgaria 143 The intertwinement of illegitimate and legitimate activities Dina Siegel – Diamonds and Organized Crime. The Case of Antwerp 169 Tim Boekhout van Solinge – Eco-Crime: the Tropical Timber Trade 193 Henk van de Bunt – The Role of Hawala Bankers in the Transfer of Proceeds from Organized Crime 223 Hans Nelen and Francien Lankhorst – Facilitating Organized Crime; the Role of Lawyers and Notaries 249 Containment and prevention Law enforcement Carlo Morselli, Dave Tanguay, and Anne-Marie Labalette Criminal Conflicts and Collective Violence: Biker-Related Account Settlements in Quebec, 1994-2001 287 Richard Staring – Controlling Human Smuggling in the Netherlands. How the Smuggling of Human Beings Was Transformed into a Serious Criinal Offence 327 Dual strategies James B. Jacobs – The Civil RICO Law as theDecisive Weapon in Combating Labor Racketeering 365 Antonio La Spina – Recent Anti-Mafia Strategies: the Italian Experience 383 Hans Nelen and Wim Huisman – Breaking the power of organized crime? The administrative approach in Amsterdam 405 New York dual strategy to contain organized crime 427 About the authors 449 Index