1. Assessing organised crime: risk based and future oriented approaches
Prof. Dr. Tom Vander Beken
Norwegian Police University College
Oslo, 12 January 2011

2. Overview Crime and/or reaction? The definition debate
Knowledge demand in a risk society
Assessing organised crime: the agenda
Risk, threat, harm and vulnerability
Tools for assessing organised crime
Future and (organized) crime assessments
Conclusions

3. 1. Crime or reaction? What is organised crime? Who, what, how, why?
How to fight organised crime (prevention and repression)?
Researching, measuring/assessing organised crime. Knowledge based policy making,…

4. 2. The definition debate
What is organised crime: If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, it must be a duck?
What makes it special? Is it group crime (criminal groups – harder to target by law enforcement)? Specific offences committed (serious crimes)?
Very fuzzy and a matter of political choice: a form of profit driven crime committed by a group of persons who use counter strategies such as violence, corruption etc.
Organised crime, organisational crime and the organisation of crimes.
Transnational organised crime? The end of organised crime?

5. 3. Knowledge demand in a risk society
From order maintenance and coercion (Bittner 1970) to policing as a risk business (Ericson & Haggerty 1997)
Police have evolved into knowledge workers or information brokers involved in risk management and risk communication: to gather information about security risks (e.g. particular populations) with new surveillance technologies, and communicate this information to other institutions (e.g. insurance companies, welfare organizations).
Intelligence-led policing as “a strategic, future-oriented and targeted approach to crime control, focusing upon the identification, analysis and ‘management’ of persisting and developing ‘problems’ or ‘risks’ (which may be particular people, activities or areas), rather than on the reactive investigation and detection of individual crimes” (Maguire 2000).

6. 4a. Assessing organised crime – the agenda
Organised crime is a key concern for many policy makers.
To give an appropriate response to the phenomenon, policy makers need to be informed:
preventive and/or repressive action
operations, tactics and strategy
Analyses are there to produce knowledge and understanding, not just information
Analyses are tools to set priorities.

7. 5b. Knowledge and risk Knowledge about the phenomenon includes:
more than reporting on law enforcement activity: (in)significant law enforcement action can “create” (in)significant phenomena;
information to think ahead about possible future developments (more than the report on last year’s situation);
not only numbers of criminals, groups or activities, but a ranking of these issues to show differences in dangerousness, seriousness, …; and
an understanding of the risk/threat posed by organised crime, the harm caused by it and the vulnerability of the environment.

8. 5a. Risk, threat, harm and vulnerability
Risk is the chance of something happening that will have an impact upon objectives.
Threat arises when a source of risk has an intent to occur or has the capability to do so.
Harm is the damage occuring should a threat be realised.
Vulnerability is an aspect of the environment offering opportunities to the threat to cause harm.

9. 5b. Risk, threat, harm and vulnerability
THREAT (criminals)
RISK VULNERABILITY (environment)
HARM (society)

10. 5c. Risk, threat, harm and vulnerability
Threat analysis: Who is responsible? - capability and intent of persons/groups – law enforcement policy tool – operational – (actors)
Vulnerability studies: How can/could this happen? – weaknesses of the legal environment (economic sectors, legislation,…) – tool for specific policies (sector representatives, CEO’s, legislation/rule makers,…) – tactical – (routine activities)
Harm analysis: What are the most harmful (organised or serious) crimes? - general policy tool – strategic – (social relations)

11. 6. Tools for assessing organised crime
Several methodological tools (best practices) exist to make « useful » organised crime assessments, focusing on:
a. Threat
b. Vulnerability
c. Harm
d. Risk

12. 6a. Threat analyses
Focus is on measuring the intent and the capability of criminals (groups) and rank them according to their « dangerousity » (e.g. Canadian « Sleipnir » analysis, European OCTA,…). Evolution to include harm aspects.
KNOWLEDGE
RESOURCES
RISK
CAPABILITY
EXPECTATION
DESIRE
INTENT
HARM
THREAT

13. 6b. Vulnerability studies
Focus is on assessing the weak points in the (legal) environment which could be exploited by organised crime. (No law enforcement bias):
Vulnerability studies of economic sectors;
Environmental scans linking political, economic, social, technological and environmental (PESTE) evolutions to (future) crime opportunities;
Scenario studies about key uncertainties;
Crime proofing studies about legislation or products; …

14. 6c. Harm assessments
Focus is on the consequences (harm) caused by organised crime.
Ranking of crime phenomena (groups/vulnerabilities?) in order of the harm they (might) cause.
Difficult and subject to debate:
what is harm (economic, emotional, physical,
intellectual, political…)?
how to measure and compare (and rank)?
Examples: UK approach (Home Office, SOCA)

15. 6d. Risk analyses
Focus is on the analysis of the risk, thus linking assessments on threat, vulnerability and harm.
The « ideal » model as it:
combines information on criminal activities (threat), about the crime opportunities of the environment (vulnerabilities) and about the impact (harm) of organised crime; and
offers knowledge to policy makers which is not only based on law enforcement activity to set priorities for both prevention and repression.

16. 7. Future and (organized) crime assessments
a. The ‘art ’ of environmental scanning
b. Accepting uncertainties: scenarios
c. Organized crime scenarios for Europe
d. Evaluation

17. 7a. The art of environmental scanning
Environmental scanning assumes that it is possible:
1. to detect major trends in society which are likely to continue in the future (forecast? predict?)
2. to link these trends to assessments of certain crime phenomena (causal relationship)
This is extremely difficult (impossible?)
The relationship between developments in society and crime is too complex. Prediction/forecasting is an art rather than a science.
Moreover, the future is pictured as static and inevitable (utility for policy makers?)

18. 7b. Accepting uncertainties: scenarios
The scenario technique allows to think about anticipation and preparation for possible future situations.
Scenarios do not present one future but several alternative worlds worth preparing (anticipating) for.
Starting point are key « uncertainties» to be used in stories about the future.

19. 7c. Organized crime scenarios for Europe
Threat (criminal groups): access to technology and the role of the public sector:
Desperate violence, Hide and seek, Traditional variety en Cyber strategies;
Vulnerability of the legal economy to organised crime: the enforcement of intellectual property rights and the regulation of economic sectors:
Resitant sectors, Fortress Europe, Sieve en Fragmented vulnerability.
(Examples taken from T. Vander Beken, ed., European Organised Crime Scenarios for 2015, 2006)

20. 7d. Evaluation
As opposed to e.g. analyses in the business world, crime analyses deal with « future » in a very simple and non effective way.
Environmental scans can be useful instruments.
Scenarios, however, are more useful to policy makers as the give a more dynamic picture of the future

21. 8. Conclusions
A good organised crime policy requires strategic knowledge about the phenomenon allowing targeted and concrete action.
Organised crime assessments are useful tools if they are able to help policy makers to assess the seriousness of the phenomenon.
Assessments based on a risk-based concept (threat, harm, vulnerability) serve that purpose best.
Scenario studies are useful tools to assess and anticipate future (organised) crime developments.

22. Envoi
“Since the plotters were flexible and resourceful, we cannot know whether any single step or series of steps would have defeated them. What we can say with confidence is that none of the measures adopted by the U.S. government from 1998 to 2001 disturbed or even delayed the progress of the al Qaeda plot. Across the government there were failures of imagination, policy, capabilities, and management. The most important failure was one of imagination. We do not believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat.”
(National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 2004: 9)