Structure versus Activity. Policing Organized Crime in Italy and in the UK, Distance and Convergence

Abstract

In recent years organized crime has developed into an independent field of study and research, borrowing frames, models and theories from criminology, sociology, history, economics, anthropology, and political sciences (Lampe, 2006). Notwithstanding numberless international provisions that in the past 20–30 years have encouraged attention to organized crime matters and called for national and international harmonization, scholarly work, however varied on the subject, has tended to ignore the strictly legal implications and dilemmas. This huge omission affects the way national policing strategies against organized crime are developed and how they relate to each other in international and transnational settings. This article aims to describe how Italian and British legal models for the fight against organized crime are constructed. Different issues in policing strategies largely depend on how organized crime is perceived by the two nations. Notwithstanding the obvious differences, the two countries often face very similar dilemmas, which blur the boundaries between the two strategies adopted. This is, however, encouraging especially in relation with calls for harmonization in judicial cooperation at the European and international levels and it is also dependent on influences of external political pressures. This article accepts and assumes the different experiences of organized crime in the two countries, but chooses to deal only with policies and legal frameworks without engaging in descriptions or analyses of the nature of the phenomena. For this reason, the article chooses not adopt a working definition of organized crime and treating organized crime as a legal category object of specific legislations.