Organised Crime Policies in Switzerland: Opening the Way for a New Type of Criminal Legislation

Abstract

This chapter discusses the most prominent changes caused by the struggle against organised crime in the administration of criminal justice and in substantive and procedural law in Switzerland. To avoid overlapping with the other Swiss contribution as much as possible, the chapter by Claudio Besozzi on the organised crime problem itself in Part II, we will restrict ourselves to a more legal approach. In the first section we will demonstrate how strongly the fight against organised crime has influenced the administration of (criminal) justice, especially as far as the centralisation of justice administration, information gathering and data processing, as well as the internationalisation of police and judicial investigations are concerned. The section also provides a short history of organised crime legislation by singling out the most important acts in this field. In the second section we try to focus on the specific character of organised crime policies in Switzerland and attempt to assess their effectiveness. The legal provisions against organised crime are dogmatically scrutinised in the third section. The various problems of implementation, interpretation and human rights issues are shown. We focus exclusively on Swiss law but the problems discussed are symptomatic of any serious organised crime legislation. The third section as well reviews the most important para-legal codes and agreements. The fourth section analyses the initiatives of international police and judicial cooperation in which the Swiss Confederation participates. The recent multiplication of these initiatives in the field of organised crime control is seen as a consequence of the internationalisation of police and judicial investigations. Some concluding remarks with a forecast of future trends follow.