Designing Crime Out

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Designing Crime Out

• Prof. Dr. Tom Vander Beken
• International Security Management Association
  (ISMA)
• 2004 Summer Meeting
• Europe and Beyond Dynamics of Crime
• Brussels, 29 June 2004

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Overview

• The cat and the kitchen
• (Organised) crime fighters rhetorics
• Measuring and approaching crime differently
• Opportunities and challenges for the business
  community
• Conclusions

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1. The cat and the kitchen

• Dramatis personae
• POEKIE, the cat
• MARTHA, the mother
• TOM, the boy
• SCENE, the kitchen

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2. (Organised) crime fighters rhetorics

• Organised crime is growing.
• Organised crime is seriously affecting economy
• We have arrested the prime suspect.
• Thousands of counterfeited goods have been
  confiscated.
• We have frozen the assets of the organisation

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3. Measuring and approaching crime differently

• A. Knowing and understanding the threat of
  (organised) crime
• B. Action beyond traditional (preventive)
  strategies

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A. Knowing and understanding the threat of
organised crime (1)

• Traditional reports on (organised) crime do not
  provide the information needed
• No indication of risk/threat
• Not future oriented
• Mainly reporting on law enforcement activity
• Organised Crime Situation Reports are to be
  converted into real threat assessments
• Introduction of risk assessment methodologies in
  oc-reports

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A. Knowing and understanding the threat of
organised crime (2)

• Framework method for Europe
• (IRCP-study and EU crimorg 133)
• 0. ENVIRONMENTAL SCAN
• 1. GROUPS
• 2. COUNTER STRATEGIES
• 3. LICIT MARKETS
• 4. ILLICIT MARKERS

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B. Action beyond traditional (preventive)
strategies

• a. Prevention of (organised) crime
• b. Crime proofing
• c. Vulnerability studies

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a. Prevention of (organised) crime

• Organised crime cannot be tackled by repressive
  action alone
• Preventive strategies should focus on the task
  environment and opportunities for organised
  crime
• Society (inadvertently) offers opportunities
  economic activity products, services,
• decision making rules, legislation

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b. Crime proofing

• Crime proofing
• Reducing the opportunities for crime which may
  be inadvertently created by legislation, products
  and processes
• (Legislative) crime proofing
• Testing legislative proposals as regards the
  crime opportunities they might create.
  (Commission 2000 and 2002)
• The scanning of loopholes and crime
  facilitating opportunities . applied to the
  legislation making process (Commission and
  Europol 2001)
• Product (crime) proofing
• No EU-definition (so-called product proofing)
  (report on implementation millenniumstrategy,
  2003)
• Method to scan the probability that a crime
  occurs due to the nature of the product (own
  tentative definition)

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c. Vulnerability studies

• MAVUS project (Method for and assessment of the
  vulnerability of sectors)
• Vulnerability studies point out where a sector
  might be vulnerable for (organised) crime (risk)
• Vulnerability assessment based on information
  about a sector, applied on vulnerability
  indicators Sector analysis (description),
  Environmental scan and cluster analysis,
  (description), Reference model analysis
  (description), Width scan (analysis), Depht scan
  (analysis), Conclusions
• Width scan vulnerability indicators refer to
  nature of the product, threshold, alternative
  markets, international context
• Depth scan vulnerability indicators refer to
  viability (costs, solvency, ) , corporate
  culture (business process level).
• Link with organised crime report method and crime
  proofing

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4. Opportunities and challenges for the business
community

• (Organised) crime is not only the governments
  business
• Economy suffers from (organised) crime, but
  provides the environment for it as well
• Analysis of sector vulnerabilities will prevent
  (organised) crime
• Courage to look at own vulnerabilities (do we
  want to know?)
• Private-public partnership

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5. Conclusions

• Existing knowledge and approaches towards
  (organised) crime need to be refined
• More attention for prevention by having a closer
  look at the opportunities (inadvertently) created
  for organised crime by the legal environment
• Knowledge of economic activity, crime situations,
  crime opportunities
• Action taken by policy makers, private sector
  representatives, law enforcement, academics