Organized Crime: Culture, Markets and Policies

Dina Siegel and Hans Nelen The term ‘global organized crime’ has been in use in criminology since the mid 1990s. Even more general and abstract than its daughter-terms (transnational or cross-border organized crime), ‘global organized crime’ seems to embrace the activities of criminal groups and networks all around the planet, leaving no geographical space untouched. The term appears to cover the geographical as well as the historical domain: ‘global’ has taken on the meaning of ‘forever and ever’. Global organized crime is also associatively linked with ‘globalisation’. The social construction of both terms in scientific discourse is in itself an interesting theme. But perhaps even more interesting, especially for academics trying to conduct empirical research in this area, is the analysis of the symbolic and practical meaning of these concepts. How should criminologists study globalisation in general and global organized crime in particular? Which instruments and ‘theoretical luggage’ do they have in order to conduct this kind of research? The aim of this book is not to formulate simple, straightforward answers to these questions, but rather to give an overview of contemporary criminological research combining international, national and local dimensions of specific organized crime pr- lems. The term global organized crime will hardly be used in this respect. In other social sciences, such as anthropology, there is a tendency to get rid of vague and abstract terms which can only serve to confuse our understanding. In our opinion, criminology should follow this initiative.

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

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.