LAW5508 Socio-Economic Crime — Unit 2: Organized Crime

Unit 2: Organized Crime

2.1 Concept of Organized Crime

Organised crime — the continuing criminal enterprise: the group structured for profit through illegal markets, operating through violence-or-corruption, with the continuity beyond the individual members. The Palermo Convention’s definitional faces: the structured group of three-or-more, the material benefit’s purpose, the serious offences’ commission. The crime-as-enterprise analogy — the illegal firm’s economics (the monopoly’s-and-protection’s logics; the black market’s filling where the legal leaves the space).

2.2 Historical Evolution of Organized Crime

1. The ancient faces — the banditry-and-piracy’s worlds (the pre-modern organised wrongs).
2. The modern births — the urbanisation’s underworlds (the nineteenth-century gangs); the Sicilian Mafia’s-and-the-American-Cosa Nostra’s lore (the immigrant-and-territory structures).
3. The prohibition’s lesson — the US experiment’s irony (the banning creating the black market’s fortunes).
4. The post-war globalisation — the trafficking networks’ internationalisation (the drugs-and-arms routes of the Cold War world).
5. The modern era — the transnational networks (the flexible cell structures); the cybercrime’s-as-a-service faces; the convergence-and-cooperation with the legitimate economy (the laundering’s bridge); the terrorist-crime nexus’s debates.

2.3 Nature and Characteristics of Organized Crime

1. The structure — the hierarchy-or-network (the boss-and-soldier pyramids vs the modern flat cells).
2. The continuity — the enterprise outlives the members (the succession’s institutional face).
3. The violence-or-corruption’s duality — the market discipline by force; the state’s protection purchased (the official’s cut).
4. The illegal market’s specialisation — the product lines (the U3 catalogue).
5. The profit’s laundering need — the dirty money’s cleaning (the U3.5 route).
6. The transnational reach — the routes-and-jurisdictions’ spread.
7. The ethnic-and-kinship myths-and-realities — the bonding’s sociology (the trust structures) against the stereotype’s critique.
   The Nepali prescribed case on the elements (cited verbatim):

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