Project description
A new look at organised crime
We all know that organised crime is harmful; however, some important aspects remain unknown. How do groups engaged in criminal activities (production, trade or governance) differ from each other? Do they each have a different organisational structure, members with different ‘professional’ profiles and skills? To what extent is there overlap between them? Under which conditions would one group specialising in production or trade evolve into a governance type organised crime group? The EU-funded CRIMGOV project will answer these questions. The focus will be on local cybercrime production hubs in Europe, the international trade of drugs from Colombia to Europe, and the emergence of criminal governance inside and outside prisons.
Objective
There is a consensus that organized crime (OC) is harmful and its profits are immense. Yet the concept of OC itself lumps together people engaging in very different activities—from peasants in Colombia to professional enablers in London to mafias in Italy—, and the data used by scholars are generally of poor quality. We are in urgent need to establish this field of study on solid analytical grounds and to produce good data. CRIMGOV is designed to do precisely that. We first present a framework that distinguishes three key activities of OC groups: Production, Trade and Governance. We will ask: How do groups engaged in (criminal) Production, Trade or Governance differ from each other? Do they each have a different organizational structure, members with different ‘professional’ profile and skills? To what extent is there overlap between them? Finally, under which conditions would one group specializing in Production or Trade evolve into a Governance-type OC group? The project will study a broad range of organized crime in depth: local cybercrime production hubs in Europe, the international trade of drugs from Colombia to Europe, the emergence of criminal governance inside and outside prisons. The project will produce high-quality data sets that are hard to collect and time-consuming to code, a challenging and risky yet highly rewarding contribution to knowledge. Breaking traditional disciplinary boundaries between the social sciences and adopting a global outlook, CRIMGOV will overturn long-held theoretical approaches, produce substantial new findings and data, and speak to scholars across different disciplines.
Fields of science
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Funding Scheme
ERC-ADG - Advanced GrantHost institution
75341 Paris
France