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Editorial Note Coming Back from the Success of the ECPR Conference In September 2014 Standing Group on Organised Crime Volume 11, Issue 3 Newsletter Editorial note In ItNh TisH IiSs sISuSeUE Coming back from the success of the Green Criminology and Organised Environmental Crime by Prof. Nigel South ECPR Conference in Glasgow Page 2 Cross-strait Cooperation in Fi- by FALKO A. ERNST and ANNA SERGI (Editors) ghting Against Chinese Organised Centre for Criminology, University of Essex Crime by Leo Lin Page 4 he ECPR Standing Group on Organ- n continuation of our efforts towards re- Tised Crime had the pleasure of par- Isearch and information on topics re- Top 5 terrorist groups 2013 (model- ticipating, once more, in the ECPR’s lated to organised crime, this newsletter led on Forbes Top 5 list of Business groups annual conference. The Section pro- proposes a number of contributions: Pro- by Prof. William (Bill) Tupman posed by the Standing Group on “Under- fessor Nigel South on organised crime Page 6 standing and Tackling the Roots of and green criminology, Leo Lin on cross- Trends in Post-Yugoslav Organised Insecurity: terrorism, straits cooperation be- Crime transnational organized tween China and Taiwan, by Matteo Albertini crime and corruption” Thanks to all Prof. Bill Tupman and his Page 8 was among the best at- top 5 list of terrorist organi- the speakers in Special Focus Summer School tended and was charac- Glasgow and to sations and Matteo Alber- Organised Crime as an actor in terized by a very high tini on trends in legal economy by Money Laundering standard of presentations the audience! post-yugoslav organised by Dario Giancane Page 10 and discussion. The Sec- crime. tion, which was our Special Focus Summer School largest so far with 65 participants, was fter the articles, students from the Corruption as Preface to Organi- composed of 9 panels, covering a large successful Intensive Summer School sed Crime A by Giuseppe Gabriele Finocchiaro, range of security topics interconnected on Organised Crime in Catania last sum- Petra Ježová, Enrico Leotta, Petr Netuka, with organized crime. We are very grate- mer have shared some of their contribu- Malwina Walenda ful for everyone’s participation and en- tions. Lastly, as usual, announcements Page 12 gagement! and calls for papers will follow in our mis- Miscellaneous cellaneous section. Happy reading! Page 14 ECPR General Conference Members of the ECPR SGOC in Glasgosw ECPR Standing Group on Organised Crime 2 September 2014, Volume 11, Issue 3 Green Criminology and Organised Environmental Crimes by Nigel South Nigel South is Professor of Socio- wanted’ – the most dangerous and the logy and Criminology at the University most legally prohibited – waste from pro- of Essex and has years of experience ducer and consumer nations to ‘victim’ in the field of critical criminology and sites, for example in the developing world. environmental issues. Mandel (1999: 66) describes this as the business of ‘deadly transfers’ of ‘unsan- What’s the connection between orga- ctioned hazardous materials’ - unwanted nised crime and the natural environment? and frequently toxic waste moved from re- Well, at one time, examining serious gulated spaces to sites where weak or no media reporting or the research literature opposition will be encountered and from would have suggested ‘not much’. Howe- developed to developing nations as part of ver, in the past decade, that has been a global industry. For Mandel, this occurs changing. In January this year, the New in a ‘disorderly world’ which poses a num- York Times ran a story headlined ‘A Mafia ber of problems for the development and legacy taints the Earth in Southern Italy’ application of law relevant to the environ- (Yardley, 2014) covering the public health ment. Transactions of this sort might re- and environmental implications of the bu- quire organised smuggling and forged rial of tons of toxic waste by organised Professor Nigel South documentation and involve operations that crime enterprises that were supposedly di- overlap with global routes and markets in- sposing of the waste safely. In the May cense are broken then corruption or fa- volving trafficking of other illegal goods 2014 issue of this newsletter, McNulty de- vours can help to support ‘business as and smuggling of human and animal car- scribed the impact of transnational organi- usual’. Environmental commodities invol- goes. sed crime on Pacific Ocean fisheries, and ved would include, for example, illegally in June 2014, UNICRI hosted a confe- harvested fish, timber or rare wildlife spe- Challenges rence on ‘The impact of organized crime cies or body parts (e.g. ivory, animal or- on the legal economy’ – with ‘environmen- gans for certain traditional medicines) as This is a mixed arena of sometimes di- tal crimes as sources of funding for orga- well as waste. In a world of over-produc- stinct, sometimes overlapping, small-scale nized crime’ featuring among the main tion and hyper-consumption the resulting and larger-volume activities and actors. topics. Of course, as Walters (2013: 282) waste poses the problem of how to di- The trading and trafficking involved may notes, this kind of organised criminal acti- spose of rubbish and commodities that are well be illegal yet hard to prevent and pe- vity is not new. Writers such as Block and now unwanted. Ruggiero and South nalise, or it may be ambiguous in terms of Scarpetti (1985) documented U.S. mafia (2010) have described the illegal services jurisdiction or responsibility. Where regu- take-overs and monopolisation of waste provided in response as ‘dirty collar crime’. lation and prohibition do make an impact management services in New York and In the U.S., studies have shown how the in terms of prevention or detection and New Jersey in the 1970s and 1980s, involvement of organised crime reaches prosecution, they may also (as with other based on tough elimination of industry into all aspects of the business, involving criminal markets) help to create the scar- competition, bribery of officials and under- control of companies offering services for city and rarity of certain commodities that cutting of prices by disposing of toxic the disposal of domestic and industrial then drive the demand for these goods waste using illegal means. But although waste. Avoidance of licensing require- (Hayman and Brack 2002: 7). Block (2002:61) has observed that ‘a new ments, the payment of bribes to dump site According to Elliott (2009: 65), whether generation of environmentally minded re- owners or the outright ownership of such ‘opportunistic and informal’ or ‘increasingly formers’ was taking note of this as far back land-sites are ways of expediting disposal systematic, well-financed and highly orga- as the 1970s, it has taken some decades cheaply though hazardously. nized’, such transnational environmental for environmental issues to climb up the Walters (2013: 281) notes that Szasz crime ‘is one of the fastest growing areas policy and policing agendas. (1986) argued such criminal enterprise of criminal activity, globally worth billions flourished as a result of ‘lax implementa- of dollars’. However it is difficult to find ap- Organised environmental crime tion and enforcement’ of rules and law and propriate and effective legal or civil reme- that today, this is ‘an insight pertinent to dies in the arena of environmental harms There is now growing acknowledge- southern Italy’s procurement of waste con- and crimes and problems of inadequacy ment of the damage caused by both legal tracts and lack of regulatory oversight’. In- of arrangements and resources for enfor- and illegal domestic and transnational tra- deed this is a business that is familiar cement of rules and laws are common- des in environmental goods. Even where internationally- both because it will operate place. Organised forms of crime operating transactions are legal, serious ecological in most or all advanced consumer econo- as illegal enterprises, frequently with legal damage can be caused with official appro- mies but also because it operates across fronts, tend to avoid effective sanction and val, and if the terms or spirit of legal li- borders, often transporting the most ‘un- disruption by means of intimidation, ECPR Standing Group on Organised Crime September 2014, Volume 11, Issue 3 3 Markets. London: Royal Institute of Inter- national Affairs. Mandel, R. (1999) Deadly Transfers and the Global Playground: Transnational Security Threats in a Disorderly World, Westport, Conn.: Praeger. McNulty, J (2014) ‘Pacific Ocean fishe- ries and the opportunities for transnational organised crime’, ECPR Standing Group on Organised Crime, May, 11, 2. Ruggiero, V and South, N (2010) ‘Green criminology and dirty-collar crime’ Critical Criminology, 18, 4. South, N (2014) ‘Green Criminology: reflections, connections, horizons’, Inter- national Journal for Crime, Justice and So- cial Democracy, 3, 2. South, N and Brisman, A (eds) (2013) The Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology, London: Routledge Szasz, A (1986) ‘Corporations, organi- sed crime and the disposal of hazardous waste’, Criminology, 24, 1. Walters, R (2013) ‘Eco mafia and en- vironmental crime’ in K. Carrington, M. Ball, E. O’Brien and J. Tauri (eds) Crime, Justice and Social Democracy: Internatio- nal Perspectives, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Yardley, J (2014) ‘A mafia legacy taints the earth in southern Italy’, New York Source: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/346967-environmental-crimes-cost-the-world-billions/ Times, January 29th. corruption and value to legitimate bu- margins’. siness as a way of ‘externalising crimino- THE ECPR SGOC genesis’ (Szasz, 1986: 23). And, of An environmentally-aware criminology course, their greatest strength lies in mee- can contribute to an interdisciplinary ap- Steering Committee 2012-2017 ting demand where supply is restricted proach to both public policy and environ- Who is Who due to externally imposed prohibitions or mental activism in ways that may help us protections or due to their own control over formulate new conceptions of offending Convenor: supply.
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