Organised Crime

Organised crime is a complex phenomenon, which has different manifestations in every country in the world. Organised crime does not exist in reality; it is a social and legal construction, an umbrella term that – depending on country, legal system, and historical events – will identify criminal networks, local and global subjects, illicit commodities, and harmful activities. This chapter will propose a critical criminological outlook for a contemporary approach to organised crime in security studies. In particular, this chapter will try to unpack what makes organised crime today; how structures and activities of organised crime come to be criminalised and perceived in their harmful potential and how the conceptualisation of organised crime is one that demands an embracing of complexity. This chapter will discuss the profit vs power paradigms and discuss how the concept of organised crime has been securitised in most countries of the world (especially in the North and West). Approaches to countering organised crime, primarily in Europe, will also be presented. The two security puzzles that this chapter proposes – one on the ‘ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia, in Italy, and one on countering illicit trade and trafficking in the port of Piraeus, in Greece – will show how difficult it is to think of organised crime solely as a security threat, once we root our analysis to the ground and to the complexity of social relations.