Beyond the Network: A Crime Science Approach to Organized Crime

Abstract

Gordon Stovin and Chris Davies are crime intelligence analysts at West Mercia Constabulary. In this article, they respond to Felia Allum's commentary on the current state of research and practice around the subject of organized crime 1 in which she surmised that ‘… communication between the academic community and law enforcement agencies … remains poor.’ The authors agree with this statement and argue that in their capacity as practitioners they are trying to do something about this. Much of the current literature on organized crime appears to start and stop at a descriptive level with few empirical studies. This description does not always benefit the practitioner and rarely informs the law enforcement response to organized crime beyond describing the criminal network. This paper tests the use of Ratcliffe's hotspot matrix 2 as a toolkit for understanding the role that place and time play within an organized criminal network.