Organised crime, occupations and opportunity

Global Crime

Volumn 9, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 185-197

  Kleemans, Edward R ^a   Van de Bunt, Henk G ^b  

^a Ministerie van Justitie   (Netherlands)

^b ERASMUS UNIVERSITY ROTTERDAM   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

Criminal careers; Occupations; Opportunity theory; Organised crime; Social network analysis; Theory

Indexed keywords

EID: 48549107664     PISSN: 17440572     EISSN: 17440580     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/17440570802254254     Document Type: Article

References (95)

1. Gerald Mars, Cheats at Work: An Anthropology of Workplace Crime (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1982).
2. E.g. Alfred Blumstein, Jacqueline Cohen, Jeffrey A. Roth and Christy A. Visher, eds., Criminal Careers and Career Criminals (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1986)
3. Terence P. Thornberry, ed., Developmental Theories of Crime and Delinquency, Advances in Criminological Theory, Vol. 7 (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1996)
4. Marc LeBlanc and Rolf Loeber, 'Developmental Criminology Updated', in Crime and Justice: Review of Research 23, ed. Michael Tonry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998): 155-98
5. Alex R. Piquero, David P. Farrington and Alfred Blumstein, 'The Criminal Career Paradigm: Background and Recent Developments', in Crime and Justice. A Review of Research 30, ed. Michael Tonry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003): 137-83
6. David P. Farrington, 'Developmental and Life-Course Criminology: Key Theoretical and Empirical Issues - the 2002 Sutherland Award Address', Criminology 41 (2003): 221-55
7. David P. Farrington, ed., Integrated Developmental and Life-Course Theories of Offending. Advances in Criminological Theory, Vol. 14. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2005)
8. John H. Laub, 'Edwin Sutherland and theMichael-Adler Report: Searching for the Soul ofCriminology SeventyYears Later', Criminology 44 (2006): 235-58
9. Terrie E.Moffitt, 'A Review of Research on the Taxonomy of Life-Course Persistent and Adolescence-Limited Offending', in Taking Stock: The Status ofCriminological Theory. Advances in Criminological Theory Vol. 15, eds. Francis T.Cullen, John Paul Wright and Kristie R. Blevins (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2006), 502-21
10. Akiva M. Liberman, ed., The Long View of Crime: A Synthesis of Longitudinal Research (New York: Springer, 2008).'
11. E.g. David Weisburd and Elin Waring, White-Collar Crime and Career Criminals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)
12. Nicole Leeper Piquero and Michael L. Benson, 'White Collar Crime and Criminal Careers: Specifying a Trajectory of Punctuated Situational Offending', Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 20 (2004): 148-65
13. Letizia Paoli, Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003)
14. Nicholas Dorn, Michael Levi, and Leslie King, 'Literature Review on Upper Level Drug Trafficking', in Home Office Online Report 22/05 (London: Home Office, 2005)
15. Carlo Morselli, 'Structuring Mr. Nice: Entrepreneurial Opportunities and Brokerage Positioning in the Cannabis Trade', Crime, Law and Social Change 35 (2001): 203-44
16. Ibid., 'Career Opportunities and Network-Based Privileges in the Cosa Nostra', Crime, Law and Social Change 39 (2003): 383-418
17. Ibid., Contacts, Opportunities, and Criminal Enterprise (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005)
18. Darrell Steffensmeier and Jeffery T. Ulmer, Confessions of a Dying Thief: Understanding Criminal Careers and Criminal Enterprise (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Aldine, 2005)
19. Neal Shover and Andy Hochstetler, Choosing White-Collar Crime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
20. See, Edward R. Kleemans and Christianne J. De Poot, 'Criminal Careers in Organized Crime and Social Opportunity Structure', European Journal of Criminology 5 (2008).
21. For the complex relationship between crime and work, see, Jeffrey Fagan and Richard B. Freeman, 'Crime and Work', in Crime and Justice. A Review of Research 25, ed. Michael Tonry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 225-90
22. Akiva M. Liberman, ed., The Long View of Crime: A Synthesis of Longitudinal Research (New York: Springer, 2008).
23. Nikos Passas, 'Cross-Border Crime and the Interface between Legal and Illegal Actors', Security Journal, no. 16 (2003): 19-38.
24. In the criminological literature, 'occupational crime' involves crimes committed as a result of an opportunity presented during lawful professional practice, e.g. Garry Green, Occupational Crime (Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall Publishers, 1997), for example, corruption by civil servants, environmental pollution and fraud. The term 'workplace crime' relates to conventional crimes (for example, abuse or stealing from a colleague) that are committed at work. These crimes are not necessarily connected to a specific opportunity that is presented by a specific occupation.
25. Mars, Cheats at Work.
26. For more information, see, Edward R. Kleemans and Henk Van de Bunt, 'The Social Embeddedness of Organized Crime', Transnational Organized Crime 9 (1999): 19-36
27. Ibid., 'The Social Organisation of Human Trafficking', in Global Organized Crime: Trends and Developments, ed. Dina Siegel, Henk Van de Bunt, and Damián Zaitch (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003)
28. Henk Van de Bunt and Edward R. Kleemans, 'Transnational Organized Crime: New Directions for Empirical Research and Public Policy', in Punishment, Places, and Perpetrators: Developments in Criminology and Criminal Justice Research, eds. Gerben Bruinsma, Henk Elffers, and Jan de Keijser (Collumpton: Willan Publishing, 2004): 198-211.
29. In the literature, we find a continually recurring discussion on whether organized crime should be defined in terms of characteristics of groups or of criminal activities. For an overview, see, Letizia Paoli, 'The Paradoxes of Organized Crime', Crime, Law and Social Change 37 (2002): 51-97
30. Cyrille Fijnaut and Letizia Paoli, eds., Organized Crime in Europe: Concepts, Patterns and Control Policies in the European Union and Beyond (Dordrecht: Springer, 2004). In the organised crime monitor, organised crime is mainly distinguished from terrorism, corporate crime, group crime and other types of crime by the characteristics of the groups involved.
31. Following the Fijnaut research group, Cyrille Fijnaut et al., Organised Crime in the Netherlands (The Hague/London/Boston: Kluwer Law International, 1998), groups are considered as organised crime groups when they are focused primarily on obtaining illegal profits; systematically commit crimes with serious damage for society; and are reasonably capable of shielding their criminal activities from the authorities. Shielding illegal activities from the authorities is made possible by using various strategies such as: Corruption, violence, intimidation, storefronts, communication in codes, counter surveillance, media manipulation, the use of experts such as notaries public, lawyers, accountants.
32. This type of organised crime is primarily concerned with the provision of illegal goods and services. Hence, transit crime differs fundamentally from the archetype of organised crime that dominates the North American literature: 'Mafia-type' organisations which have gained control of certain economic sectors or regions, acting as 'alternative government', Paoli, 'The Paradoxes of Organized Crime', 71
33. Fijnaut and Paoli, eds., Organized Crime in Europe, 603-21
34. Edward R. Kleemans, 'Organized Crime, Transit Crime, and Racketeering', in Crime and Justice in the Netherlands. Crime and Justice. A Review of Research, ed. Michael Tonry and Catrien Bijleveld (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 163-215.
35. Florike Egmond, Underworlds. Organised Crime in the Netherlands, 1650-1800 (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 1993)
36. Anton Blok, Honour and Violence (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 2001).
37. Blok, Honour and Violence, 29-68.
38. Lange discusses the occupational background of the members of four German groups from around the same period and particularly reveals the overrepresentation of mobile professions. Besides the opportunities that these professions offer for criminal activities, Lange stresses social exclusion too, Katrin Lange, 'Many a Lord is Guilty, Indeed for Many a Poor Man's Dishonest Deed: Gangs of Robbers in Early Modern Germany', in Organised Crime in Europe: Concepts, Patterns and Control Policies in the European Union and Beyond, ed. Cyrille Fijnaut and Letizia Paoli (Dordrecht: Springer, 2004), 113-21.
39. In those times, the majority of people were farmers or day labourers. Only 20% of the robbers fell into this occupational category.
40. They also assisted the executioner in torture, in his work on the scaffold, and in transporting and burying executed people.
41. Blok, Honour and Violence, 33.
42. Ibid., 32-5.
43. We listed the occupations mentioned in the police files. Hence, occupation may relate to education or to licit activities before or during the engagement in criminal activities. Furthermore, the cases contain a large number of suspects without an occupation or with unknown occupational background. Practising an occupation is by no means necessary for engaging in organised crime activities.
44. See for more case material from the Organised Crime Monitor on underground banking, Henk Van de Bunt, 'The Role of Hawala Bankers in the Transfer of Proceeds from Organized Crime', in Organized Crime: Culture, Markets and Policies, ed. Dina Siegel and Hans Nelen (New York: Springer Sciences and Business Media, 2008).
45. E.g. Joseph L. Albini, The American Mafia: Genesis of a Legend (New York: Appleton, 1971)
46. Francis A.J. Ianni and Elizabeth Reuss-Ianni, A Family Business: Kinship and Social Control in Organized Crime (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972)
47. William J. Chambliss, On the Take: From Petty Crooks to Presidents (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1978)
48. James O. Finckenauer and Elin J. Waring, Russian Mafia in America: Immigration, Culture, and Crime (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998)
49. Kleemans and Van de Bunt, 'The Social Embeddedness'
50. F. Varese, The Russian Mafia: Private Protection in a New Market Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001): 737-67
51. Sheldon Zhang, 'Enter the Dragon: Inside Chinese Human Smuggling Operations', Criminology 40 (2002)
52. Morselli, Contacts, Opportunities, and Criminal Enterprise
53. Mangai Natarajan, 'Understanding the Structure of a Large Heroin Distribution Network: A Quantitative Analysis of Qualitative Data', Journal of Quantitative Criminology 22 (2006): 171-92.
54. Mars, Cheats at Work.
55. The four cases that are described in more detail concern monthly ecstasy transports (14 observed ecstasy transports; total estimated amount of pills: 700,000), systematic tax fraud (over a 5-year period; total estimated loss: More than 100 million Euro), frequent cocaine transports (monthly or every two weeks; estimated amount of 15-40 kilo per transport), and oil fraud (over a 3-year period; total estimated loss: more than 40 million Euro).
56. Mars, Cheats at Work.
57. As an anthropologist, Mars places great emphasis on culture, but we prefer to reserve the grid dimension for the organisational structure and formal social control, while reserving the group dimension for informal social control (and organisational culture). We will also disregard his interesting typology, which is derived from ecology (donkeys, wolves, hawks, vultures). This typology may be enlightening for Mars' purposes, but loses its value, in our opinion, when applied to crimes often committed in a group context. The distinction between 'hawks' (that hunt alone and do not need to concern themselves overly with the group) and 'vultures' (that operate independently, on the basis of a group with strong cohesion) particularly loses its value in this application and is confusing rather than enlightening, Ibid.
58. A parallel could be drawn here with the 'control balance' theory developed by Charles R. Tittle, Control Balance: Toward a General Theory of Deviance (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), a recent general theory about criminal behaviour which has also been applied to organisational crime
59. Nicole Leeper Piquero and Alex R. Piquero, 'Control Balance and Exploitative Corporate Crime', Criminology 44 (2006): 397-429.
60. Blok, Honour and Violence.
61. See, for example, Peter Reuter, Disorganized Crime: Illegal Markets and the Mafia (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983)
62. D. Gambetta, Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988)
63. Gary W. Potter, Criminal Organizations: Vice, Racketeering, and Politics in an American City (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1994)
64. Gerben Bruinsma and Wim Bernasco, 'Criminal Groups and Transnational Illegal Markets: A More Detailed Examination on the Basis of Social Network Theory', Crime, Law and Social Change 41 (2004): 79-94
65. Klaus Von Lampe and Per Ole Johansen, 'Organized Crime and Trust: On the Conceptualization and Empirical Relevance of Trust in the Context of Criminal Networks', Global Crime 6 (2004): 159-84.
66. See also, Irving L. Janis, Victims of Groupthink (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1972).
67. For instance, Wayne E Baker and Robert R. Faulkner, 'Diffusion of Fraud: Intermediate Economic Crime and Investor Dynamics', Criminology 41 (2003): 1176-83.
68. For a review, see, Albert J. Reiss Jr., 'Co-Offending and Criminal Careers', in Crime and Justice. A Review of Research, ed. Michael Tonry and Norval Morris (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1988), 117-70
69. Pierre Tremblay, 'Searching for Suitable Co-Offenders', in Routine Activity and Rational Choice, ed. Ronald V. Clarke and Marcus Felson (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1993), 17-36
70. Mark Warr, Companions in Crime: The Social Aspects of Criminal Conduct (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
71. Waring and Weisburd, eds., Crime and Social Organization.
72. E.g. Passas, 'Cross-Border Crime'
73. Edgar Tijhuis, Transnational Crime and the Interface between Legal and Illegal Actors: The Case of the Illicit Art and Antiquities Trade (Nijmegen: Wolf Legal Publishers, 2006).
74. Kleemans and De Poot, 'Criminal Careers'.
75. E.g. Morselli, 'Structuring Mr. Nice', Ibid., 'Career Opportunities', Ibid., Contacts, Opportunities, and Criminal Enterprise.
76. E.g. Baker and Faulkner, 'Diffusion of Fraud'.
77. Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza, 'Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency', American Sociological Review 22 (1957): 664-70
78. Shadd Maruna and Heith Copes, 'Excuses, Excuses: What Have We Learned from Five Decades of Neutralization Research?' Crime and Justice. A Review of Research 32 (2005).
79. Scott L. Feld, 'The Focused Organization of Social Ties', American Journal of Sociology 86 (1981):1015-35.
80. E.g. Ronald S. Burt, Structural Holes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992)
81. Ibid., Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
82. Henk Van de Bunt, 'Muren Van Stilzwijgen', in Drie Perspectieven Op Sociale Controle, ed. Henk Van de Bunt, René Van Swaaningen, and Pieter Spierenburg (Den Haag: Boom Juridische Uitgevers, 2007), 113-36.
83. John H. Laub and Robert J. Sampson, Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
84. See also, Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke, 'Analyzing Organized Crimes', in Rational Choice and Criminal Behavior: Recent Research and Future Challenges, ed. Alex R. Piquero and Stephen G. Tibbetts (New York: Routledge Press, 2002), 41-62
85. Henk Van de Bunt and Cathelijne van der Schoot, eds., Prevention of Organised Crime: A Situational Approach (Collumpton: Willan Publishing, 2003)
86. Marcus Felson, Crime and Nature (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2006)
87. Ibid., 'The Ecosystem for Organized Crime', in HEUNI Papers (Helsinki: HEUNI, 2006)
88. Edward R. Kleemans, 'Introduction to Special Issue: Organized Crime, Terrorism and European Criminology', European Journal of Criminology 5 (2008): 5-12
89. Carlo Morselli and Julie Roy, 'Brokerage Qualifications in Ringing Operations', Criminology 46 (2008): 71-98.
90. E.g. Ronald V. Clarke and Marcus Felson, 'Introduction: Criminology, Routine Activity, and Rational Choice', in Routine Activity and Rational Choice, ed. Ronald V. Clarke and Marcus Felson (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1993), 1-14
91. Marcus Felson, 'The Process of Co-Offending', Crime Prevention Studies 16 (2003): 149-17
92. Ibid., Crime and Nature.
93. Felson, Crime and Nature 98-99.
94. Ibid., 'The Ecosystem for Organized Crime'.
95. E.g. Morselli and Roy, 'Brokerage Qualifications'.