May 2013 Volume 10, Issue 2

Newsletter
In ThIs Issue
Talking about the Ndragheta. Interview with Anti-mafia Prosecutor Alessandra Cerreti Page 2 Current and future trends in the fight against OrganiseCrime by Jrgen Storbeck Page 4 The Merida Initiative and the war Against Drugs and Crime in Mexico by Nelson Arteaga Botello Page 6 Close-proximity research on (Mexican) Organised Crime: suicide mission or empirical imperative? by Falko A. Ernst Page 8 The art of making do in Naples (by Jason Pine, 2012) Book Review by Alessandro Colletti Page 10 Lush Life. Constructing Organised Crime in the UK (by Dick Hobbs, 2013 Book Review by Anna Sergi Page 11

Editorial note

News from the SGOC

by FALKO A. ERNST and ANNASERGI (Editors)
Centre for Criminology, University of Essex

hile waiting to be enchanted by the finds that efforts to combat Organised food, the wine and the French at- Crime have not been in vein albeit mosphere as well as insightful discus- much improvement remains to be done. sions and presentations in Bordeaux for Identified by Europols founding director the ECPR General Conference in Sep- as crucial in this context, our methodoltember 2013, the Executive Committee ogy series continues exploring ways to of the Standing Group on Organised data access. As part of the methodology Crime has kept working on building its focus in the current issue, Falko Ernst network as well as conrefers to his research on firming its reputation and Mexican Organised Crime Waiting for the commitment. to suggest that close-up ECPR General Confe- empirical research might Much in this newsletrence in Bordeaux, we be feasible in a larger ters spirit to provide a number of cases than genhope to see many of forum for current deerally assumed. you there. bates, Mexican scholar Nelson Arteaga joins in Last but not least, a with an increasing number of voices first hand interview with Italian Anti-mafia statemen and scholars alike casting Prosecutor Alessandra Cerreti sheds doubt on the sense of a militarised strat- light on the increasingly noted phenomeegy against drugs production and traffick- non of the Calabrian Ndrangheta proing. Jrgen Storbeck, drawing on posing a very interesting point of view on decades of experience as one of Eu- how to approach this threat. Happy readropes leading law enforcement officials, ing!

ECPR General Conference 2013 Bordeaux 4-7 September 2013

ECPR Standing Group on Organised Crime May 2013, Volume 10, Issue 2

Talking about the Ndrangheta Interview with Anti-mafia Prosecutor Alessandra Cerreti
Interview by Anna Sergi

lessandra Cerreti is Antimafia Prosecutor for the Direzione Distrettuale Antimafia of Reggio Calabria, Italy.

How would you summarise the sequence of events that led Italy and Europe to talk about the 'Ndrangheta? What has changed in recent years? The massacres of the early 90s in Palermo, Sicily, saw the repressive effort of Italian State, and the interest of national public opinion as well as foreign policy, on the Sicilian "Cosa Nostra". This allowed the Ndrangheta in Calabria to proliferate in the shade of understatements and connivance. Until recently, it was believed that the Ndrangheta was a bunch of autonomous mafia clans scattered throughout the territory of Calabria and often conflicting with each other. The massacre in Duisburg, Germany, on August 15, 2007, turned the spotlight on the international side of the Ndrangheta, revealing the international ramifications and the disturbing criminal potential. Already on the 16 October 2005 the Ndrangheta had made his "voice" heard by killing the vice president of the Regional Council of Calabria, Francesco Fortugno. After these dramatic events, the Italian State has started to invest manpower and resources in the fight against the Ndrangheta. In 2008 from the Public Prosecutor of Palermo, Giuseppe Pignatone and Michele Prestipino were trasferred to Reggio Calabria, because they had been among the main protagonists of the struggle to the Sicilian "Cosa Nostra". They brought with them the best investigators in Palermo and created a pool of young magistrates, prepared and specialised. The results were not long in coming: disarticulation of the most important mafia clans; arrest of the most dangerous fugitives, hundreds of thousands of euro of assets confiscated to the Ndrangheta, tons of drugs seized. How does the 'Ndrangheta look like today in Calabria and outside of Calabria? The most striking result obtained by

the new anti-mafia action is represented in the so-called Operation. CRIMINE conducted in coordination between the prosecutor offices in Reggio Calabria and in Milan - which has enabled, in the 13 July 2010, the arrest of over 300 Ndrangheta members throughout the country. That investigation led to an excellent result: it has demonstrated the unity of the Ndrangheta, a criminal organization turned out to be structured and equipped with a vertex. Both the Judges of Milan in Reggio Calabria confirmed this setting. However, the sentences are not yet final.

complex criminal phenomenon: the major risk is underestimating its danger and relegating it to the status of local crime or, at most, national. Operation Crimine has shown that the Ndrangheta has settled in most of the territories of the Italian regions and in European countries, as well as in Canada and Australia. In these territories, the Ndrangheta has moved through phenomena of genuine colonisation. The strength of the Ndrangheta, however, lies not only in its military strength (albeit extremely dangerous) but in the network of plots and conspiracies that this mafia has been able to establish with entire portions of the so-called. "Civil society": politicians, businessmen, professionals. This represents the "know how" of the Ndrangheta and this is what makes it particularly powerful and insidious. It is not, therefore, enough to target the military wing; you need to cut the ties with what is called the "gray area" that is, with those individuals who, although not organically in the criminal structure, encourage its power through their contribution and increase its social strength and its economic force. You said elsewhere that by exploiting and encouraging the collaboration of women of the 'Ndrangheta it is possible to open a gap in the criminal organisation. Can you explain what you mean by that? What role can the women of the 'Ndrangheta have? The contribution of knowledge that women are able to give to investigators is absolutely precious. Rarely covering positions of power, they are aware of the associative dynamics, the roles played by each of the family members, criminal activities related to the clan, investments and recycling . Women represent a window on the mafia clan, because they know the criminal structure from the inside and that is this what makes their contribution valuable to the investigators and absolutely terrible for the mafia organisation. The environmental context in which these stories of collaboration are born l boration context of women is strictly a mafia-type based family.

Prosecutor Alessandra Cerreti

So far, in all the trial cases agains the Ndrangheta, it has been necessary first to prove the existence of the Mafia organisation and after the connections of the individual defendant to the organisation Once the trial sentences for the Operation Crimine become final this will not be necessary: to prove the existence of the Ndrangheta it will be enough to use that judgment. Given the peculiarities of Calabria, how is it possible to explain abroad the phenomenon of the 'Ndrangheta? Can it be done without explaining the structure of the Calabrian society and concepts such as the 'gray area'? The Ndrangheta is an extremely

ECPR Standing Group on Organised Crime ECPR Standing Group on Organised Crime May 2013, Volume 10, Issue 2 May 2013, Volume 10, Issue 2

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Calabria

The SGOC will be represented in the following conference:

ORGANISED CRIME AS A SECURITY CHALLENGE IN SOUTHEAST EUROPE

May 30 - June 02, 2013 Budva
www.aspeninstitute.de

South of Italy, Sicily and Calabria The Ndrangheta is different from other mafia-type criminal organisations (Cosa Nostra, Camorra...) for the relations of kinship among affiliates. The clans of the Ndrangheta are normally composed of father, mother, brothers, sisters, uncles, cousins etc.. It is this feature that makes the Ndrangheta less "permeable" to cooperation with the law: the close emotional family relationship makes it harder to take the collaborative path. Nevertheless, in Calabria we have recently achieved an outstanding result: the first collaborations of women of the Ndrangheta, women belonging to powerful mafia families, motivated by a strong desire to ensure their children a different future from that to which would be used within the clan. These brave women, managing to overcome the conspiracy of silence that characterises the mafia, have managed to break the mafia link and to give their children a future of freedom. The collaboration with the justice is seen as an act of love towards their children. This is a revolutionary concept and it is unacceptable for the Ndrangheta. Therefore, the 'Ndrangheta in your opinion can be defeated only from the inside, then only from Calabria? Far from it. Surely you have to start from Calabria, where the "head" and the "heart" of the Ndrangheta are. This is not sufficient unless it is accompanied by the awareness of the complexity of the criminal phenomenon that has now crossed national borders, to become one of the most powerful criminal organisation in the world. It is necessary to disarticulate the organization not only from the military point of view but also from the economic point of view. The money does not stay with the Ndrangheta in Calabria, which is the poorest region of Italy. The huge flows of money that the Ndrangheta own, most of the time cross national boundaries. Finally, what advice would you give to the Italian legislator and what advice would you give to foreign legislators regarding the fight against organised crime? The Italian anti-mafia legislation is one step ahead: just think of the regime of rigorous imprisonment for mafia members, or of the regulations of patrimonial preventive measures, which provides for the preventive seizure of assets accumulated by the mafia. We must not give up on investigation instruments such as collaborators of justice and interceptions. The Italian legislative gap is represented at the moment by the failure to include the crime of "self-laundering", instead punished in various foreign countries. Also particular attention needs to be given to cash flows: the Ndrangheta has huge availability of cash to reinvest and at a time of economic crisis, as the current one, this can be a serious threat to international markets.

Montenegro Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration

The ECPR SGOC Who is Who

Convenor: Felia Allum, University of Bath Co-convenor: Francesca Longo, University of Catania Social Networks Officer: Bill Tupman, University of Exeter, Anglia Ruskin University Funding Officer: Daniela Irrera University of Catania Events & Publication Officer: Helena Carrapico, University of Dundee Strategic Communication: Panos Kostakos, University of Bath Newsletter Editors: Anna Sergi & Falko Ernst University of Essex

ECPR Standing Group on Organised Crime May 2013, Volume 10, Issue 2

Current and future trends in the fight against Organised Crime

by Jrgen Storbeck* (Founding Director of Europol) Translation by Falko A. Ernst

oston, Mumbai, London, Madrid, New York cities associated both by the public and security agencies with spectacular terrorist attacks. In the past 12 years, the fight against Islamist but also against nationalistic as well as racist terrorism has become the centrepiece of crime combating efforts. In response to the increased public attention and the political upheaval that have accompanied such attacks, political decision makers as well as heads of security and law enforcement agencies have had to re-allocate resources, including manpower and technical capacity, and provide the required legal grounds. National police bodies have thus, at times for months, been forced to diminish to a minimum or even utterly suspend the fight against Organised Crime to comply with political pressures to combat terrorism. The fight against Drug Trafficking and Organised Crime became a prioritised matter of national and international law enforcement in the early 1990s and has led to a strengthening of ICPO-Interpol, to the erection of Europol and Eurojust as well as to increased budgets and improved technical and operational capacity for law enfocement across the EU. Pertinent legal instruments such as the Palermo convention have furthermore been created. Thus fostered, especially Europol, the German Bundeskriminalamt and the British SOCA have developed into significant bodies for combating national, EU-wide and even global crime. Currently, the seemingly imminent terrorist threat has led to a diminished public awareness with regards to Organised Crime. The fight against drugs has become an every-day-routine, police and society seem to have surrendered to the burgeoning drug crime. The fight against money laundering, praised as a remedy against the most diverse forms of crime not too long ago, is lacking new impulses although it has been a remarkable tool for countering terrorism. It could, however, gain momentum once again due to the public indignation about tax fraud and the role of financial safe havens. The current phenomenological changes of Organised Crime are, however, not being sufficiently noticed. Nor are the financial damages, caused especially by economic crime, that so high as to seem

Jrgen Storbeck

unreal and therefore not even taken serious any more. The public is astonished at cases of cybercrime such as the recent manipulation of baking data and the subsequent rapid extraction of 45 million US Dollars by an internationally operating group without necessarily classifying it as Organised Crime. One example amongst many others that illustrates the underestimation of organisational capacity and criminal energy is the counterfeiting and smuggling of medicines and cigarettes. Classified by Europol as figuring amongst the most menacing forms of crime for the EU and, in the case of the latter, estimated by KPMG to cost 12.5 billion Euros in lost revenue in 2012 alone, these matters still seem to be of little importance for politicians, the general public and even law enforcement agencies. Moreover, the involved groups show all signs of modern crime in terms of internationality, structuring and market-oriented behaviour. This has just recently been demonstrated once again by two separate investigations in the Netherlands and Slovakia that unveiled a sophisticated continent-wide network, dedicated not only to the production and sale of counterfeit cigarettes but also of Cannabis. It appears that the fight against crime is governed, at times, by political and professional fashions that override true economic and existential threats. This may be due to the fact that we have gotten used to Organised Crime to such a degree that we do not notice its evolution anymore

even though institutions such as Interpol and SOCA constantly report trends and developments. Still, the public, politicians and even policemen tend to reduce Organised Crime to the Mafia or Eastern European groups. During the past three years, however, a certain change of mind about threats and harm could be observed that is majorly based on the impact the internet has had on economic offenses. The latters immense danger for society and the economy seems to slowly become understood. Not least due to its tangible implications for a greater amount of individuals participating in virtual reality and becoming victimised, cybercrime has become a prominent matter of public discussion that bears the chance to construct adequate responses as international, national and local interests converge. The machinations that have ultimately led to the global financial crisis have had an even more important effect on the critical evaluation of illegal economic conduct. Citizens and politicians now finally demand more drastic steps to be taken by police and the judiciary against the ones responsible. On a weekly basis, the media now publish reports portraying supposed or actual offenses of this kind and calling for action as well as prevention. Yet, even if systematic economic crime as well as following scandalous cases especially in Germany and France that have affected the balance of political power and could even entail social unrest tax fraud have been discussed more intensely, economic crime and cybercrime are rarely associated with Organised Crime. This is due, on the one hand, to a lack of knowledge about the type and quantity of crimes committed and, on the other hand, due to the abovementioned stereotypical and reductionist view of Organised Crime that, held even by prosecutors and police, leaves little space for the persona of the manager of modern crime. The threat and risk analysis of Europol and further institutions, however, allow for a good approximation and evaluation out of which pertinent measures can be generated: Parallel to the globalisation of the financial, further economic sectors and tourism, the internationalisation and the increasingly diversified organisation of crimes will undergo a further acceleration.

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ces into future conduct and adopt best practices from partner institutions. The basis for success is a systematic and modern information management that is not limited to the gathering and sharing of case-specific information. Major advancements have here been achieved through new legal bases, methods based on the so called Swedish Initiative and new information systems such as SIENA. Nevertheless, much basic research remains to be done about issues such as perpetrators, structures, methods, financing and the securing of power within organised criminal groups. Even though called upon to close such knowledge gaps, divergent political priorities and budget constraints frequently and with few exceptions such as the Bundeskriminalamt impede law enforcement agencies to undertake corresponding research. In most other countries, such research is entirely in the hand of universities and scientific institutes that do not, e.g. for legal reasons, have sufficient information access. They are, however, less restricted in legal terms when it comes to dark-field research, for instance. A broad alliance between law enforcement agencies, the academy, society and the private sector frequently victimised but also at times a (un-)voluntary tool could thus lead to significant advances and should be advanced. from police, customs, prosecution and further agencies from different states and legal cultures allows for synergies in terms of capacities, knowledge and legal competences. Beyond the right methodology based on factors such as the right planning, pertinent research and analytical-investigative capacity fighting Organised Crime is highly dependent on specific and ongoing training and the efficient sharing of information. In many EU member states, training is still an overly neglected aspect. Via internet-based knowledge gateways and expert chat rooms, the exchange of knowledge and experiences has become much facilitated. So as to withstand the challenges of modern crime, such instruments need to become a law enforcement routine. In synthesis: Politics, society and law enforcement agencies are all called upon to recognise Organised Crime as a serious threat to the rule of law, democratic stability, the economy and social peace within the EU and to develop and implement an effective combating strategy. Through the globalisation of the economy, finance and trade, Organised Crime has obtained an additional dimension. Both nationally and internationally, the responsible bodies need to be legally and structurally empowered to rapidly as well as flexibly fight this type of crime. The focus needs to be on information sharing, joint analysis, training for instance in form of online-based expert gateways and co-operation in questions of prevention as well as repression. The creation of a cybercrime centre at Europol is an impressive signal by the EU for the will to face new criminal risks and challenges. Through new forms of communication and co-operation, the private sector and the general public need to be involved in the fight against Organised Crime in stronger ways, uncovering their activities and impeding the collusion between legal and criminal structures. There are some, yet thus far only few promising approaches to combat Organised Crime. The path will be long and thorny. *Having read law in Bonn, Munich and Tbingen, Jrgen Storbeck took up a position with the Bundeskriminalamt in 1977 to become a key representative of German international policing affairs. Head of the Europol Drug Unit from 1994, he served as the founding Director of Europol until 2004. Upon coordinating Germanys police cooperation with the Gulf region until 2006, he took over a leading role in public security and policing matters for the federal state of Brandenburg.

The still rising importance of the internet and the fact that two to three world languages, understood by eighty percent of the world population, will dominate its tools (facebook, twitter, ebay, e.g.) as well as the world of business in general can be seen as a crucial reason in this context. This mutual connectivity could lead to a strong increase in offending, victimisation and caused damages, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Especially the financial and the strongly growing service sectors dependency on exact yet rapid data traffic could open up new criminal dimensions as the falsification of data creates new criminal opportunities. Bot-nets, for instance, can and will be used to victimise millions of individuals, but also to reach customers of illicit products. The EU as well as single nations appears to be willing to put recommendations by Europol and national law enforcement agencies against Organised Crime and cybercrime into action. Yet, easier said than done. For key political, judicial and definitional questions remain unanswered: What are, in the first place, Organised Crime, economic crime and cybercrime? What are their forms and their harms? Do we have all the legal instruments and the institutional framework to effectively prevent and repress them? How about the manpower, the technical and the financial resources? And are our societies and states able to be sufficiently pro-active and not only reactive? An array of European countries law enforcement agencies as well as political decision makers still largely lack an effective and efficient analytical capacity. There is a scarcity in manpower and adequate training but also in pertinent structures, methods and technological equipment, including analysis software weak points that are further increased through insufficient exchange of information and missing analyses across nations and spheres, with the exception of Interpol and especially Europol. Prosecutions, if they take place, are predominantly restrictive in the sense that the complexity and length of trials leads to a limitation to single cases or clusters of cases that have already become apparent. Generally speaking, the internationality of Organised Crime is frequently too much to cope with for national actors whose cross-border cooperation is often rendered impossible due to legal and structural differences. What have we learned about containing Organised Crime during the past 10 to 15 years? Combating Organised Crime cannot be static but needs to incorporate future developments, translate current experien-

To take pertinent action presupposes possessing extensive, reliable data as well as sophisticated threat analyses such as the ones provided by Europol in qualitatively, yet not quantitatively sufficient terms. On the basis of thus generated insights, strategic priorities need to be set that are not solely established in response to single spectacular cases in realms such as child pornography. Furthermore, investigative methods are to be improved. Promising approaches exist in form of now internationally recognised joint teams that have brought good results. The bringing-together of officers

ECPR Standing Group on Organised Crime May 2013, Volume 10, Issue 2

The Merida Initiative and the war Against Drugs and Crime in Mexico
by Nelson Arteaga Botello (FLACSO-Mxico)*

n recent years, Mexico has experienced a complicated scene of violence that has involved drug trafficking related organized crime, state forces police and army and civil society groups such as organized surveillance and auto defense groups, as well as social networks. These three spheres reflect the presence of surveillance systems that in the background function as social classification systems which identify and monitor groups as targets. In the beginning, during the sixties, drug trafficking was an important activity in the country, but confined to defined rural zones (Astorga, 2005). From the mid-nineties, it transformed into an activity that expanded both in rural as well as urban communities, which was followed by an increase in socio-technical surveillance devices directed at controlling the distribution of the drug, the administration of groups and populations (Sung, 2004). This problem was ultimately confronted by the government with a policy of the war against drugs (Moloeznik, 2007), whose main element has been the technical modernization of surveillance. The result is that many of these devices started being used with political aims and for social control (Campesi, 2011). The production of natural drugs in Mexico has been linked, as Madonado (2010a) points out, to the creation of protection groups of large estate owners, serving as intermediaries between themselves and peasants. This type of armed brokers or bandits also developed functions uniting the city and the country. Its force lies in the knowledge, surveillance and control of a territory and its population, which allows them to model social behavior through the use of negotiation, coercion and violence. When the modernization projects and national internationalization plunged the farm workers into poverty, isolation and exclusion, these brokers were responsible for inserting an agricultural economy into the global market for drugs (Maldonado, 2010b). Facing the uncontrolled violent surveillance by organized drug trafficking groups, the Mexican State implemented a series of security policies in different fields and distinct levels of government during the nineties. In 1995, the General Law that establishes the bases for a na-

Nelson Arteaga Botello

tional public security system was set out, whose objective was to create an information and crime surveillance system in the country, involving the municipal, state and federal government branches. With the publication of the law years later, a strategy that was known as the National Crusade against Crime and Delinquency was defined, focusing on settling the technological delay in surveillance and anticrime intelligence (1). Since the first decade of this century, the Integral Strategy of the Prevention of Crime and Combat of Delinquency has operated. Its goal was to concentrate and harmonize all data, absolutely all of the data that the State has in its different orders of government and power as well as configuring the map of delinquency in the entire country. Finally, in the last years, the Platform Mexico was established whose objective it is to wage the war against crime with cutting edge surveillance technology. This platform was connected in recent years with the Mrida Initiative which followed the idea of strengthening the capacity of intercepting electronic communications, surveillance and other espionage technologies, within the national territory and connecting with the North American and Canadian surveillance systems (Fyke and Meyer, 2008) (2). The goal of the initiative is to reduce the increasing asymmetry between Mexican agents (police, intelligence and army)

and drug traffickers by providing arms and advanced information equipment, in addition to high technology, equipment and software for keeping an eye on the borders and the interchange of information. Additionally, it seeks to professionalize the police and public prosecutors in the use of these tools. The training would be provided by both U.S. judicial agents and private contractors (Freeman 2008). The Merida Initiative intends to balance an asymmetry in the administration of security in Central America. It is conceived, therefore, as a transnational cooperation project in the sense of a comprehensive package that involves the respective governments. Its supporters believe it is comprehensive because the agreement encompasses security and all its components. However, the Merida Initiative goes further than a simple surveillance strategy. It also intends to generate the assemblage of various surveillance devices that would allow the broadening of regional cooperation between the United States, Mexico and Central America for combating crime. The idea is to articulate the different surveillance spaces that each member of the Initiative builds, so that it can guarantee the security of the region. Such assemblage is derived from the United States own security architecture and that interlinks politics, bureaucracy, army, judicial system, police and crime control. The Merida Initiative would attempt to fight crime, assemble more advanced surveillance technology, and train human resources in each countrys governmental administration. In the same way, for Mexico and Central America, the Initiative implies recovering the feeling of control over national territories. That is why the Merida Initiative gives more weight to the army than to the police. In the case of Mexico, for example, the different military operations against drug trafficking and against public insecurity in various states of the Republic has been characterized by the exclusion of municipal police and, in some cases, state police. Most coordination is carried out between the army and federal police. The strategy is not approached from the perspective of the police but from that of the armed forces. Therefore, it would appear that the Merida Initiative

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ding the battlespace into the everyday sites, spaces and experiences of city life. Mexico and Central America are constantly considering the necessity of extending surveillance towards the population as a whole in order to bring violence to a halt. This is articulated in a process of delocalizing borders, carried out by the United States in the war against terrorism and drug trafficking. The application of such a security agreements should include the requirement of certain limitations of surveillance in each country. Traditionally, physical borders were enough to control, but with the Merida Initiative, borders have acquired another dimension altogether when supported by coordinated electronic surveillance databases. This dimension is yet another example of what Lyon (2003) considers a vision of the interoperation of systems to increase the opportunities to protect borders and defend them against terrorism. Phenomena of the Torture in Mexico prepared by a group of civil social organizations that watch the development of military and police power in Mexico. The report can be found at: http://www.equidad.scjn.gob.mx/IMG/pdf/En_nombre_de _la_guerra_contra_la_delincuenciasp.pdf References Astorga, Luis (2005) El siglo de las drogas. El narcotrfico, del Porfiriato al nuevo milenio, Mxico: Plaza y Jans. Campesi, Giuseppe (2011), Policing, Urban Poverty and Insecurity in Latin America: The Case of Mexico City and Buenos Aires, Theoretical Criminology, 14(4), pp. 447-471. Freeman, Laurie (2008) Dj vu la poltica antidrogas en la relacin MxicoEstados Unidos, Foreign Affairs en Espaol, (8) 3, pp. 15-23. Fyke Joel and Maureen Meyer (2008), No todo lo que es oro brilla y no todo lo que brilla es oro Amenazas para Mxico?, Foreign Affairs en Espaol, (8) 3, pp. 25-31. Graham, Stephen (2012) When life It self is war: On the urbanization of military and security doctrine, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (36)4, pp.136-155. Maldonado Arana, Salvador (2010) Globalizacin, territorios y drogas ilcitas en los estados-nacin. Experiencias latinoamericanas sobre Mxico, Estudios Sociolgicos. 83(1), pp. 411 442. Maldonado Arana, Salvador (2010b), Drogas, violencia y militarizacin en el Mxico Rural. El caso de Michoacn, Revista Mexicana de Sociologa, 74(1), pp. 3-37. Moloeznik, Marcos, (2007) Militarizacin de la Seguridad Pblica y Autonoma de las Fuerzas Armadas en Mxico, Criminalia. 73(2), pp. 55-74. Sung, Hung-En (2004) State Failure, Economic Failure, and Predatory Organized Crime: A Comparative Analysis, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 41(2), pp. 111-129. Lyon, David (2003) Surveillance after September 11, Cambridge: Polity Press *Nelson Arteaga Botello holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Alicante, Spain. After serving as director of faculty of Political Science and Public Administration of the Autonomous University of the state of Mexico, he is currently holding a professorship at the Pan-American University Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in MexicoCity. His research interests include surveillance, security politics, violence and social inequality.

einforces the capability of surveillance of the Mexican and Central American armies over the population within their territories. This implies that the violent conflicts between the armed forces and criminal gangs in these countries are carried out in a dispersed, continuous and sporadic manner. The military presence in the police forces is a permanent and central element in these phases, programs and strategies designed to combat criminal violence in the country. In the first place, members of the army, high authority and troops had directly intervened in security policies; in some cases, taking charge of patrolling the cities and municipalities in substitution of entire police bodies which had been dismantled due to links with drug traffickers (3), and in second place, because the armed forces intervention was based on anti-guerrilla strategies of the sixties and seventies. Public security in Mexico has lived, in this sense, a militarization process with effects on citizen rights and justice. One of the more harmful consequences of this scenario is the increase in the violation of human rights (4). Graham (2012) shows that one of the key elements that direct the new military strategies against crime is to think and act in terms of battlespace (and not battlefield), a conception of military matters that includes absolutely everything, temporally and geographically. There is no front or back, no beginning or end, it is omni-ubiquitous and not limited to a battlefield. The war against drugs and crime in Mexico and in Central America opened the door to this military thinking which was implemented in two phases. The first one, establishing the country as a battlespace, included the engagement of its populations over a series of military operations, demonstrating the immediate presence and force of the state by employing not the only police but also the military. The second phase consisted in the dillusion of the force of the state in a cloud of data correlation, that is, in the imprecise identification of persons, left to be increasingly intrusive and profound, thus expan-

Endnotes (1) The objective was to interrogate the National Information System which allowed the handling of 50 million fingerprints, as well as facial recognition and anthropomorphic data of 5 million people. (2) Also contemplating an investment of 400 million dollars from the Mexican government for the acquisition of internet facial recognition, espionage of mobile telephones, as well as software for the control at a distance of computers and password directories, see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/201 2/08/120803_narcotrafico_mexico_espionaje_internet_ant.shtml (3) see: http://noticaribe.wordpress.com/2011/ 01/17/entran_siedo_y_ejercito_a_seguridad_publica_caen_mas_policia/ (4) With respect to this point in particular see the report : In the Name of the War Against Delinquency: A Study of the

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Methodology Series

ECPR Standing Group on Organised Crime May 2013, Volume 10, Issue 2

Close-proximity research on (Mexican) Organised Crime: suicide mission or empirical imperative?

by Falko A. Ernst* (University of Essex)

aken to be unpragmatic and overly dangerous, options that include getting physically close to Organised Crime tend to be categorically discarded from methodological repertoires. Whilst not incomprehensible, this generalized notion of impossibility has come at a high analytical cost. Data scarcity has plagued the phenomenons (academic) study from its very beginning on. Giving rise to what has been criticized by researchers such as Letizia Paoli and Dina Siegel as reductionist and speculative accounts that insufficiently reflect local realities, the academic dependency on the bits and pieces of data trickling down from the realm of law enforcement has constituted a major issue (commented upon by Europols founding director, Jrgen Storbeck, in this newsletter). So as to make headway in elaborating more comprehensive accounts on Organised Crime, new (or reactivated) ways to data access appear most crucial: not only to prevent an ontological crisis but, foremost, to transcend an often times hermetic academic discussion so as to inform policy design and help mitigate harm. No such far-reaching, if highly desirable, contributions can be expected from single research projects. I sustain, however, that the methodological potential for empirically studying Organised Crime is far from realised. Close-proximity empirical research into Organised Crime does, in other words, not represent an utter impossibility and might indeed be feasible in a greater number of cases than commonly assumed. Drawing on my experience of conducting field research on Mexican Organised Crime (and coming back in one piece), I sustain that such research can succeed under certain circumstances. The latter, I believe, are fundamentally case-dependent and resist compression into onesize-fits-all recipes. Gaining access to the core operational territory of Los Caballeros Templarios (LCT, The Knights Templar), popularly considered one of Mexicos big seven (Drug Trafficking Organizations), became possible due to a confluence of factors, some of which I

Falko A. Ernst briefly discuss below. An integral part of a year-long field work period terminated in August 2012, ethnographic sojourns in the mentioned area known as Tierra Caliente or Hot Land were carried out. The aim of these stays was to shed light on the underestimated and underilluminated side of Mexican Organised Crime, the organizational behaviour of illicit actors towards the local, essential not only due to the ongoing restructuration of entire socio-cultural, economic and political settings but also as a key for understanding such groups organizational survival and resilience. Mirroring this focus, I was particularly keen on engaging with local civilian populations, the main recipients of LCTs practices of governance. However, once I had entered the region, further opportunities arose and in situ interviews were carried out with leading members of LCT, amongst further informed actors. Touching upon some key insights gained, I conclude by suggesting that the fruits of such undertakings may well be worth the trouble. No access for a gringo (without a gatekeeper) A notorious scenario of the Mexican war on drugs, Tierra Caliente seems to perfectly embody what has been labelled

a black hole, a territory governed by forces other than the (legally acting) state and blocked off from outsiders access. Assertions that attempting to extract data from this region was not a wise idea formed a constant background noise to my gradual approximation. Providing a most illustrative example, a Mexican expert on Drug Trafficking told me that, of course, I could get in but that the real problem consisted in not making it out again. Such statements were based on the idea that, if already near-impossible for a Mexican, it would be ridiculous for somebody perfectly fulfilling the stereotype of a gringo (Caucasian North American) to even consider entering the core territory of a group known, amongst other things, for having pioneered the practice of using decapitations as a means of communication. Ultimately, though, my foreignness turned out to be my biggest asset for gaining access. For rather than being perceived as a nosy foreigner supposing a risk for whomever might share information with me, I was greeted as a welcomed opportunity for locals to provide the outside world with a perspective beyond what they perceived to be biased government and media accounts. In the same vein, I found that being from a nation without an identifiable stake in the ongoing conflict (Germany) and enjoying the assumption of inconspicuousness and neutrality of a research student were essential for fostering trust. That I was able to, in the first place, pro-actively construct and use this positively connoted role to extract data would have been, beyond any doubt, unfeasible without the support of a gatekeeper. I was lucky to connect with a local who signalled interest in my study, welcomed its objectives and arranged for me to enter the region. As a respected member of local society, he was able to vouch for my integrity calming, for instance, initial suspicions that I might be an oreja (ear, government informant) , provide informed risk assessments with regards to which leads to follow and to open up communicational channels to informants.

ECPR Standing Group on Organised Crime May 2013, Volume 10, Issue 2

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rate my presence had been effectively communicated throughout the entire organisation and that it would furthermore be respected by all members. More preoccupying, however, seemed the fact that I was moving within a contended territory. As if to demonstrate that being caught in crossfire was not entirely unlikely, heavy confrontations between the federal police and LCT took place in the precise location I had carried out an interview in barely days before. Furthermore, being in the possession of data that could potentially disclose the whereabouts of wanted individuals could bring me in conflict with state actors and face me with legal consequences, a scenario not unfamiliar to criminological researchers. The fruits of taking risks The substantial problem of inevitably possessing but incomplete information about understudied settings such as Tierra Caliente leads to a trade-off between control and depth of access. Some element of risk, conceivable or hidden, will form a fixture of such projects. Ultimately, it is a question of each individual researchers good judgement to give it a try or not. Categorically discarding getting close as a viable methodological pathway unnecessarily shuts doors, though. For it is only by cautiously approaching the respective research setting that the specific conditions allowing for or prohibiting entry are unveiled. Deeper penetration might be more feasible than is conceivable from afar and what is to be gained in terms of enriching our understanding of a phenomenon underilluminated in decisive ways is well worth the attempt. Extracting data about the form of territorial rule exercised by LCT has led me, to name but one result, to argue that the local cannot be considered, at least in the Mexican case, a scenario collateral to that of the transnational. The latter, the predominant focus of analyses constrained to the realm of illicit markets seen as populated by rationally informed, purely profit-oriented actors, does thereby not lose its importance. Recognizing, however, that we are confronted with a phenomenon whose complexity and context-bound variety resists reductionist approaches, is crucial. For the local has, for LCT and further groups in the regional context, become the primary stage for organizational resilience and survival. To be precise, LCT has come to relate to the surrounding socio-cultural setting in a way that allows it to mobilize resources as vital and as diverse as economic resources and sets of social and symbolic capital. In this vein, the groups interwovennes with local civilian populations has enabled it to withstand concentrated dismantling efforts by both the federal government and enemy groups. The organizational structures and practices that inform this locally-rooted survival strategy and that, at the same time, underlie the groups continued participation in super-regional and transnational (market) structures usually remain hidden from the outside world. Unveiling them can therefore only be achieved if we dare to (attempt to) take a closer look. Falko A. Ernst is a PhD Candidate at the University of Essex, Centre for Criminology, Department of Sociology.

Negotiating access with the de facto authorities. Once entered Tierra Caliente, LCT one whose pillars of territorial control is a tight-knit informational system designed to report unusual occurrences such as the entry of outsiders was quick to let me know that it had taken notice of my presence. That I was, as a result of the subsequent negotiation of my presence with the de facto regional authority, granted the right to stay might appear contradictory to basic assumptions about the nature of Organised Criminal Groups. LCT, however, is different insofar as it has undertaken great efforts to portray itself as a necessary force of order legitimised by the states incapacity to defend the region from greater evils such as the infamous Zeta-Organisation, as leading members would reiterate in interviews. My own persona as a neutral observer seems to have thus been read as yet another opportunity to convey this image. Additionally, an UK-based researcher taking interest in this organization seems to have been interpreted as a tacit recognition of actors who thrive on pride and status at least as much as on material gains. Anticipating and dealing with risks Being granted guest status meant that the source of risk I had anticipated to be the greatest, LCT, was ultimately the least worrying one at least to the best of my knowledge. For the conditions upon which this protection depended were never explicitly laid out, rendering the fathoming of behavioural limits a delicate act. In the same vein, I could not be absolutely certain that the decision to tole-

Tierra Caliente, Michoacn (Photo: Archivio Cuartoscuro)

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ECPR Standing Group on Organised Crime May 2013, Volume 10, Issue 2

BOOKREVIEW

The art of making do in Naples

by Jason Pine
(University of Minnesota Press, 2012)
Reviewed by Alessandro Colletti (Universit Roma Tre)

hen an anthropologist decides to get into a very tangled cultural/economic/aesthetic skein as Naples, he has at least two choices: either to observe with participation through witnesses eyes or to immerse himself into the milieu of everyday life. Based on a long presence in the field, The Art of Making do in Naples mixes both aspects in an original, scientific, productive way. This riveting ethnography moves into the economic reality of the city which mixes in infinite ways legal and illegal market, games of dominance and sovereignty, opportunities and threats in the everyday life: all this keeping the focus on those people for whom the Camorra is a social institution with which sooner or later everyone must confront. As the author says people took the Camorra for granted as if it were a natural disaster that seemed always on the verge of overwhelming and transforming everything into something else. Pines research deals with the art of making do in an underground art market: the neomelodica music scene, one of many instances where the formal, informal, and illicit economies overlap, in Campania and beyond. By overcoming traditional approaches showing the Camorra as an alternative state and very far from a preconceived interpretative framework, the author shows us how things really work, by placing himself in the eye of the storm. The result is a special point of view explaining how the Camorra enters daily living not merely as a criminal violent system, but through persuasion of weak ties, network of relationships, offering opportunities for a decent life, at least equal to or greater than the one promoted by legal system. After being deeply immersed for a long time to understand the web of relationships in a strong market and in the cultural context, the author experiences the only possible way to really understand it: to becoming an active player of the network, struggling with the art of making do. For this purpose the research explores the cultural basic codes of ancient

Neapolitan living habits that turn, but do not change, in the broader processes of continuous modernisation. In this perspective the art of making do is the keyconcept through observing and experiencing the contact zone, where economic underworld often meets and melts with upperworld society. The work, on the whole, is well articulated through a clear narration structure made up of six steps modelled into chapters. In the first one the author tries to dissect the polysemic concept of the Camorra in its long, discontinuous, and disputed history, without overlooking sudden changes in contemporary Italian society. Through the use of an annotated bibliography, enriched by important historical facts, organised crime does not appear to be such an immutable, rigid, structured concept. By following the change of political power and social classes, it seems to be an articulated set of various organisations, which operate in different ways, in different environments of opportunity. In the second step the analysis leads the author to expand the concept of power to an atmospheric, nebulous presence. As he says, these indeterminate forces organised crime groups can rely on claim to immeasurable authority (59). The journey inside the under-

world of neomelodica scene offers an opened window through whom it is possible to observe the actors on the scene: singers, musicians, composers, businessmen seeking personal affirmation and floating in the gray area where boss-entrepreneurs can provide easy paths to fame and success. The third step follows one of the most deeply rooted cultural scene in Naples and beyond: the sceneggiata. The traditional Neapolitan melodramatic, theatrical music genre is used as interpretative key for neomelodica music origin and as mirror of popular culture and performances of everyday life. In the fourth and fifth steps we find ourselves immersed in contexts of real life, where economic interests, emotions, affections, success and defeats are set in a single scenario: the omnipresent network of families. It seems as if the author finds the relational strategy to jump in the contact zone between the art of making do and the interest of the Camorra. Semblance and dissemblance often obfuscate the view of the research, but the author seems to play with his skills to capture the swindle overtaking the ethnographic imbroglios. Equipped with a camera and a specific knowledge he places himself in the underground of neomelodica as an actor of the scene, building his own network made up of artists, DIY recording studios and, lastly, a boss-entrepreneur on the scene. In the last step the author gives us the best passage: with the skill of a fisherman, he casts his net, waiting to capture his bait, with the high risk of being already in a contact zone and to become himself a quarry. Pines research shows us how the art of making do is not just a way of survival but, in the neomelodica music scene as well as in other context, it becomes an aesthetic/affective compromise, an unintentional metaphor that well represents not only the South, but the paradoxes of Italy as a whole: in politics, as well as in the economic, social and, at last but not least, cultural scene.

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BOOKREVIEW

Lush Life. Constructing Organized Crime in the UK

by Dick Hobbs
(Oxford University Press, 2013)
Reviewed by Anna Sergi(University of Essex)

ush Life. Constructing Organized Crime in the UK, by Dick Hobbs (Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Criminology at the University of Essex, and Professor of Sociology at the University of Western Sydney) has been published in early 2013 in the Clarendon Studies in Criminology Series of Oxford University Press. The book represents the mix of the authors previous works with new materials on themes which have never been proposed to the general public in such a way before. Lush Life is divided in eleven chapters. In the introductory chapter the author explains the aims and the methods of the book, strictly based on ethnographic studies of neighbourhoods in East London addressed as Dogtown, a fictitious location where organised crime, local criminalities and international economic interests overlap. Chapter 2 illustrates the evolution of the state responses to organised crime in the UK. Chapter 3 narrates the stories of organised criminals before the term organised crime was used, while chapter 4 maps the connection between industrial neighbourhoods, extortions and criminal groups (especially in London) in the twentieth century. Subsequently, chapter 5 looks at the shift from the neighbourhood to the suburbs while chapter 6 expands on the issues of territoriality by looking at youthful collaborations to entrepreneurial crime. Chapter 7 examines the rise and fall of armed robbery; chapter 8 deals with the entrepreneurially-based trading cultures, intended as opportunistic

and disorganised in nature and also very distant from the working-class experiences of the industrial era. Chapter 9 analyses how criminal groups use violence, rumour and gossip to enhance control and order, while chapter 10 looks at the way criminal relations can be interpreted today in a view of cosmopolitanism and enlarged criminal markets. Finally, chapter 11, conclusive chapter, attempts at proposing some closing comments through a summary of the contents and stressing upon the concept of community of practice. Lush Life is not only a well researched but it is also written in a style which is a very successful mix of humorous stories, witted considerations and narration of many voices among the people the author has met in very diverse environments. Hobbs writing style reaches well beyond academic minds and can represent a very interesting reading for whoever is interested in organised crime as embedded social and economical phenomenon. In terms of content, Dick Hobbs essentially supports the thesis that organised crime is indeed an everyday phenomenon embedded in the local experience. Furthermore, as in the Hobbs works since the late 1980s, the nature of organised crime - notwithstanding cosmopolitan drives and claims on the globalisation of markets - is still very much

Professor Dick Hobbs

linked to social, political, economic changes occurring in a given territory, characterising that specific glocal character so dear to the author. It seems obvious in Hobbs account that every moral, social political and economic change, including but not limited to phenomena of globalisation, has a strong impact on the construction and documentation of organised crime in a certain area or even nation. The book convincingly focuses on this construction of organised crime as a monolithic threat to societies, which is eventually informed by political agendas. In doing so, the author looks at the everyday performance (4) of organised crime in Dogtown, East End of London, through the eyes of those who try to compete for a spot in the underworld. However, the book is not bound to local territories, but indeed touches upon sociological considerations valid and reliable far beyond London or the UK. Being the work essentially ethnographic in nature and relying on years of experience in the field, the decision of the author to expand the realm of research beyond Dogtown, to political, historical and sociological considerations is not only welcome but highly appreciated. Last but not least, Dick Hobbs writing style, half-way between fiction, screenwriting and journalism, completes the picture by ensuring that the reader turns each page wanting more details about that society Dogtown appears to be and in which Hobbs drags us with skills and wit. Indeed, the book has the potential of becoming a classic, beyond the academic field, as both its content - the assessment of perceptions and sociological categories for understanding organised crime as well as the rich case studies, filled with aneddoctes and details, all wrapped into a thrilling wirting style, make this book a truly enjoyable read.

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Human dimensions in organised crime, money laundering and corruption Petrus C. van Duyne, Jackie Harvey, Georgios A. Antonopoulos, Klaus von Lampe, Almir Maljevic, Jon Spencer (eds.) Wolf Legal Publishers (WLP), 2013 This volume is based on the presentations of the authors at the eleventh Crossborder Crime Colloquium, hosted 21-22 May 2012 by Manchester University. This project was supported by: Tilburg University (the Netherlands) Teesside University Northumbria University Heuni (Finland) The Cross-Border Crime Colloquium is an annual event since 1999. It brings together experts on international organised (economic) crime to discuss the latest developments in empirical research, legislation and law enforcement, with a special geographical focus on Western, Central, and Eastern Europe. The Colloquia aim at building bridges in three respects: between East and West Europe, between scholars and practitioners, and between old and young. The Cross-border Crime Colloquium, so far, has been organised fourteen times, with the last annual meeting held in Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge 12-14 May 2013 About the Book Organised crime, whether or not in its Transnational manifestation, is usually depicted in huge threatening dimensions. However, despite this sometimes superhuman representation one should not forget that we are dealing with a human phenomenon and, therefore, should not lose sight of the corresponding human dimensions. This also concerns related phenomena such as money laundering and corruption that forces itself upon us when we look back over the past decades at the threat images portrayed by the authorities as well as the media. What threat has come true since, say, 1970 or 1980? We still observe

ECPR Standing Group on Organised Crime May 2013, Volume 10, Issue 2

the same (criminal) business as usual, together with the alleged accumulation of huge amounts of crime-money. However, these threat images are mainly presented from an underworld gaze directed at the criminal exploits of hoodlums and thugs, under the civilised society. Most often these criminals were viewed as coming from abroad. Meanwhile the criminal (underworld) markets have not faltered. Despite this continued threat, the industrialised world grew steadily richer and safer up until 2008. That is until the effects of enduring massive criminal manipulations in the financial upperworld brought this growing affluence to an inglorious end. Corruption is another threat to the fabric of society. Do the anti-corruption policies in countries at the rim of the EU achieve results? There are reasons to believe that most of the policy making effects consist of the facades in a Potemkin village: a paper world of ratified conventions, enacted laws and ineffective institutions. Most human and most deceptive. In this eleventh volume of the Cross-border Crime Colloquium series, twenty six European experts present their latest or on-going studies and research findings. The seventeen chapters cover a range of subjects which are of lasting interest for researchers as well as policy-makers: organised crime, criminal finances, money laundering and corruption. They make us aware of the human dimension in misdeeds as well as the related policy making.

Transnational Organised Crime in a Globalised World

Accepted Panels and Papers (click on each title for the links):
Critical Perceptions of Transnational Organised Crime and Human Trafficking Organised Crime Governance and Organisational Studies Organised Crime in Cyberspace: Governing, Controlling and Exploring Cyber Crime ActivitiesPutting OC in Place: How Situational Crime Prevention can Inform Enhanced Policy Design The Internal/External Continuum in Transnational Organised Crime The Role of Transnational Organised Crime in the Context of States in Transition/ States in Crisis Transnational Organised Crime and Gangster Politics: Exploring Synergies between the Licit and Illicit Worlds Transnational Organised Crime and Terrorism: Different Peas, Same Pod? Transnational Organised Crime, Corruption and State Infiltration

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GLOBALCRIME Special Issue

Call for papers
Transnational Organized Crime and Terrorism: Different Peas, Same Pod?
Guest Editors: Helena Carrapico (University of Dundee), Daniela Irrera (University of Catania) and Bill Tupman (University of Exeter).
In recent years, the United Nations and European institutions have recurrently underlined their growing concern towards the threat posed by potential and existing collusions between organised criminals and terrorist groups. The European Parliament and Europol, in particular, have recently alerted to the degree of dangerousness that both organised crime and terrorism currently represent in the world, highlighting that the cooperation or merger between these two phenomena is of urgent contemporary interest. Academic literature in this area, however, remains scarce and characterized not only by a degree of skepticism, but also by a lack of interdisciplinarity. Bearing in mind this gap in the literature, the guest editors of the Special Issue wish to contribute to this field of expertise by gathering a number of interdisciplinary case-studies that will engage with the concept of crime-terror nexus. The guest editors therefore welcome articles aiming at: enriching the empirical knowledge on the nature of the crime-terror nexus and its evolution throughout the world; exploring the impact of the nexus within different economic, political and societal contexts; and expanding on its theoretical conceptualization. The deadline for the submission of the articles is November, 15th 2013. Authors are encouraged to contact the guest editors with early expressions of interest. Please contact Helena Carrapico through the following email address helena.carrapico@eui.eu

ECPR SGOC
Call for papers
The ECPR Standing Group on Organised crime is seeking to launch a new journal in 2014 dedicated to organised crime and its related disciplines.

The Group believes that there is a need for a true international journal which encourages debate between disciplines, nationalities, theoretical approaches, academics, practitioners, and policy makers. This will be an international peer-reviewed open access online journal. The Journal is interested in any topic related to organised crime (including country case studies, media and organised crime, narratives of organised crime, policymaking, and methodological aspects in organised crime research). The editors welcome theoretical and empirical studies as well as research reports presenting the latest research on organised crime from a variety of disciplines, such as criminology, criminal justice, political science, law, security studies, sociology, gender studies, economics, media studies, anthropology, and history. It also actively seeks contributions from international practitioners and policy-makers who work in the area of organised crime and who want to share their knowledge and experiences with the wider community. The deadline for the submission of papers is September, 1st 2013. Authors are encouraged to contact the editors with their ideas.Please contact Felia Allum (University of Bath) and Anita Lavorgna (Univrsity of Trento) through the following e-mail addresses: f.s.allum@bath.ac.uk anita.lavorgna@unitn.it

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CONTRIBUTIONS!
For the newsletter we are looking for short original articles (1000-2000 words) on different organised crime-related themes. These contributions can stem from yur on- going research or from summaries of published material, which you might wish to circulate among the organised crime research community. You may also contribute to the content of the newsletter by sending us any announcement of conferences/ workshops/ literature references you feel could be of interest to this field. You are also invited to propose things that could improve the quality of the newsletter. Please send your suggestions and articles to: asergi@essex.ac.uk faerns@essex.ac.uk

ECPR Standing Group on Organised Crime May 2013, Volume 10, Issue 2

The Next Issue of the ECPR Standing Group on Organised Crime Newsletter will be available at the end of September 2013. The deadline for articles and contributions is 30 August 2013.

SUGGESTIONS!

See you in Bordeaux!

THESGOC WELCOMES THE INTERNATIONALADVISORS

The Group is particularly happy to welcome our International Advisors whose role will be mainly one of guidance of the Groups activities. The Committee would like to thank for joining us: Rob Wainwright (Director of Europol), Bill Hughes (Strategic Law Enforcement Consultant and Former Director ofSOCA), Maria Grazia Giammarinaro (OSCE Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings). The Committee would also like to make sure that at all time the independence of the international advisors is guaranteed. We are currently aiming at increasing and finalising the number of our external advisors as well as appointing Representatives for regions other than Europe. The SGOCis fully committed to make the most out of these collaborations and to continue in strengthening its networks before during and after the General Conference in Bordeaux where we have been allocated 9 panels under the overarching theme Transnational Organised Crime in a Globalized Context. While wating for France, we hope you have enjoyed this latest issue of the newsletter!

Visit the New SGOC Website at: www.sgocnet.org Please sign in to add or edit your own name/affiliation/research interest in the e-directory here Visit the SGOC blog at: http://sgoc.blogspot.co.uk Join Our Facebook Group Page.. and we are also on LinkedIn and Twitter @ecpr_sgoc!