Know the Fundamentals of Criminal Groups
While participants in a gathering are extremely dependent on the physical and social environment, members of a criminal group use their internal structure to control their environment. Internal structure can protect a group’s core members from the physical and social environment within which it operates. This means that leaders of criminal groups are exposed to fewer risks from the police and from rival groups. The downside of a group organization is that it is costly—senior members need to compensate junior members and others for the risks they run. Further, as groups become more organized they are likely to grow, and the larger they become, the greater attention they attract from the police. Finally, a tightly organized criminal group is less flexible in adapting to changes in the environment.
Sometimes it will be difficult for you to determine if you are dealing with an organized group or an unstructured gathering. If individual offenders perceive the physical and social environment in the same way, these offenders may behave in the same way and appear more organized than they really are. Here are some hypothetical examples of how this confusion can arise:
◾ Copper thieves can independently learn that
vacant buildings in a particular neighborhood are good targets. Here thieves take advantage of the environment provided. Since each thief sees the same environment, each behaves the same way, even though they are not coordinating their actions. In contrast, an owner of a recycling business might recruit thieves, direct them to vulnerable targets, provide transportation, settle disputes among thieves, and provide guarantees that they are paid. In this case, the owner is creating an organization that is not completely dependent on the environment. To you, the two scenarios may look the same. You could mistakenly believe that in the first instance the thefts were organized or in the second instance that the thieves were disorganized individuals merely taking advantage of an obvious opportunity. Your intelligence analysis can help avoid such mistakes.
◾ Speeding may be highly concentrated along
a particular stretch of highway at particular times, because each driver perceives the same opportunity to speed. Drivers only take into account the road in front of them and the cars
instructions from a “head” driver. The stable environment creates recurrent patterns of congestion and speeding. Intelligence analysis is not helpful with such collections (though crime analysis is). Let us contrast this speeding example to illegal road racing. An illegal road- racing gathering needs some organization, but not much because the relevant environment—the street system—is highly predictable and well understood by its members. Members know that on certain nights, particular stretches of road will be highly suitable for racing. The gathering only needs to be organized enough for members to know that others will show up at advantageous times and places and will obey the same rules of conduct. Such a gathering can operate because the environment provides much of the information necessary to coordinate activities. Such a group is highly dependent on this environment—if it changes then the group may have difficulty adapting. Nevertheless, a rudimentary organization facilitates the races.
◾ A group must be organized if it is to export stolen cars on a routine basis. The environment still produces opportunities (e.g., being near a port city), but to select the types of vehicles the export market wants, in the volume necessary, and coordinate the thefts with the shipping, the offenders must be far more organized than the street racers. Though these offenders are exercising more control over their environment, changes in the environment (e.g., tighter controls over who is allowed into the port facilities) can reduce the ability of this organization to function.
You can reduce the ability of organized groups to commit crimes by breaking them up or by changing the physical or social environment on which they rely.
The importance of these two approaches will vary by the internal structure of the organization you are analyzing. The rare extremely organized crime groups will require far more law enforcement effort, though changing the environments can help undermine their capabilities. The more frequently encountered loosely structured organizations will be more vulnerable to environmental changes and less responsive to enforcement. Problematic gatherings, being more dependent on their environments, are best addressed
28 Intelligence Analysis for Problem Solvers
While such organizations still exist, their prominence has faded and they now comprise only a minority of organized criminal groups. Far more common are small, organized networks of entrepreneurial offenders, often transitory in nature, that develop to exploit particular opportunities for illegal profit. These groups vary from temporary associations created to commit a time-limited series of offenses, to enduring businesses that invest in on-going criminal activities (see Table 4).
The formal definitions of organized crime recently adopted by the national police forces in the U.K. and Germany, as well as by the European Union, reflect this new reality. In all cases, the definitions try to include the entrepreneurial groups, principally by stating that the organized group can be composed of as few as two individuals. For example, the German federal crime intelligence office, the Bundeskriminalamt (or BKA), defines organized crime as follows:
“The planned violation of the law for profit or to acquire power, where offences are each, or together, of a major significance, and are carried out by more than two participants who co-operate within a division of labor for a long or undetermined time span using: a) commercial or commercial-like structures, or b) violence or other means of intimidation, or c) influence on politics, media, public administration, justice and legitimate economy.”
Many of the crimes committed by organized criminals—for example; human smuggling, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and money laundering— depend on overseas contacts. Opportunities for these crimes have expanded in line with increased globalization and developments in technology. Thus,
the growth in international trade has made it easier to import drugs and to export stolen motor vehicles. The rise of the Internet and cell phone technology has made it easier to coordinate transnational crimes. The expansion of air travel has facilitated migration, legal and illegal, which brings with it increased opportunities for crime. This is because recent THE POPULAR IMAGE OF “ORGANIZED CRIME” IS THAT OF LARGE, ENDURING MAFIA-TYPE SYNDICATES, often with international reach, which are involved in a variety of criminal enterprises including extortion, racketeering, drug sales, and human trafficking. These syndicates have strict hierarchies of authority and demand extreme loyalty from their members, who might perform specialist roles. When necessary, they will seek to corrupt officials and they will use violence to enforce obedience from those they exploit or victimize.