Capturing "organised crime" in Australian Law

This briefing paper presents and foreshadows ongoing PhD research by the first author into how understandings of organised crime in Australia have been shaped, and the extent to which these perceptions have influenced legislative and policing responses. It begins with an historical survey of significant models of organised crime, then reviews current Australian legislative strategies, and goes on to raise questions about the conceptual model that underpins these strategies. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential policy implications of this research.

A Story of Organized Crime: Constructing Criminality and Building Institutions

This is a narrative about the way in which a category of crime-to-be-combated is constructed through the discipline of criminology and the agents of discipline in criminal justice. The aim was to examine organized crime through the eyes of those whose job it is to fight it (and define it), and in doing so investigate the ways social problems surface as sites for state intervention. A genealogy of organized crime within criminological thought was completed, demonstrating that there are a range of different ways organized crime has been constructed within the social scientific discipline, and each of these were influenced by the social context, political winds and intellectual climate of the time. Following this first finding, in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with individuals who had worked at the apex of the policing of organized crime in Australia, in order to trace their understandings of organized crime across recent history. It was found that organized crime can be understood as an object of the discourse of the politics of law and order, the discourse of international securitization, new public management in policing business, and involves the forging of outlaw identities. Therefore, there are multiple meanings of organized crime that have arisen from an interconnected set of social, political, moral and bureaucratic discourses. The institutional response to organized crime, including law and policing, was subsequently examined. An extensive legislative framework has been enacted at multiple jurisdictional levels, and the problem of organized crime was found to be deserving of unique institutional powers and configurations to deal with it. The social problem of organized crime, as constituted by the discourses mapped out in this research, has led to a new generation of increasingly preemptive and punitive laws, and the creation of new state agencies with amplified powers. That is, the response to organized crime, with a focus on criminalization and enforcement, has been driven and shaped by the four discourses and the way in which the phenomenon is constructed within them. An appreciation of the nexus between the emergence of the social problem, and the formation of institutions in response to it, is important in developing a more complete understanding of the various dimensions of organized crime.

Thinking critically about rural crime: The influence of William J. Chambliss

William J. Chambliss (Bill) is well-known for his path-breaking theories of lawmaking and for his innovative research on state-organized crime. However, rarely discussed is the fact that his study of the original vagrancy laws marked the birth of rural critical criminology. The main objective of this article is twofold: (1) to show how Bill helped shape contemporary rural critical criminology and (2) to provide suggestions for further critical theoretical and empirical work on rural crime and social control.

Crime Justice and Social Democracy: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference, 9-10 July 2015

We are pleased to present these selected papers from the proceedings of the 3rd Crime, Justice and Social Democracy International Conference, held in July 2015 in Brisbane, Australia. Over 350 delegates attended the conference from 19 countries. The papers collected here reflect the diversity of topics and themes that were explored over three days. The Crime, Justice and Social Democracy International Conference aims to strengthen the intellectual and policy debates concerning links between justice, social democracy, and the reduction of harm and crime, through building more just and inclusive societies and proposing innovative justice responses. In 2015, attendees discussed these issues as they related to ideas of green criminology; indigenous justice; gender, sex and justice; punishment and society; and the emerging notion of ‘Southern criminology’. The need to build global connections to address these challenges is more evident than ever and the conference and these proceedings reflect a growing attention to interdisciplinary, novel, and interconnected responses to contemporary global challenges. Authors in these conference proceedings engaged with issues of online fraud, queer criminology and law, Indigenous incarceration, youth justice, incarceration in Brazil, and policing in Victoria, Australia, among others. The topics explored speak to the themes of the conference and demonstrate the range of challenges facing researchers of crime, harm, social democracy and social justice and the spaces of possibility that such research opens. Our thanks to the conference convenor, Dr Kelly Richards, for organising such a successful conference, and to all those presenters who subsequently submitted such excellent papers for review here. We would also particularly like to thank Jess Rodgers for their tireless editorial assistance, as well as the panel of international scholars who participated in the review process, often within tight timelines.

News Media, Crime and Fear of Violence

Finland witnessed a surge in crime news reporting during the 1990s. At the same time, there was a significant rise in the levels of fear of crime reported by surveys. This research examines whether and how the two phenomena: news media and fear of violence were associated with each other. The dissertation consists of five sub-studies and a summary article. The first sub-study is a review of crime reporting trends in Finland, in which I have reviewed prior research and used existing Finnish datasets on media contents and crime news media exposure. The second study examines the association between crime media consumption and fear of crime when personal and vicarious victimization experiences have been held constant. Apart from analyzing the impact of crime news consumption on fear, media effects on general social trust are analyzed in the third sub-study. In the fourth sub-study I have analyzed the contents of the Finnish Poliisi-TV programme and compared the consistency of the picture of violent crime between official data sources and the programme. In the fifth and final sub-study, the victim narratives of Poliisi-TV s violence news contents have been analyzed. The research provides a series of results which are unprecedented in Finland. First, it observes that as in many other countries, the quantity of crime news supply has increased quite markedly in Finland. Second, it verifies that exposure to crime news is related to being worried about violent victimization and avoidance behaviour. Third, it documents that exposure to TV crime reality-programming is associated with reduced social trust among Finnish adolescents. Fourth, the analysis of Poliisi-TV shows that it transmits a distorted view of crime when contrasted with primary data sources on crime, but that this distortion is not as big as could be expected from international research findings and epochal theories of sociology. Fifth, the portrayals of violence victims in Poliisi-TV do not fit the traditional ideal types of victims that are usually seen to dominate crime media. The fact that the victims of violence in Poliisi-TV are ordinary people represents a wider development of the changing significance of the crime victim in Finland. The research concludes that although the media most likely did have an effect on the rising public fears in the 1990s, the mechanism was not as straight forward as has often been claimed. It is likely that there are other factors in the fear-media equation that are affecting both fear levels and crime reporting and that these factors are interactive in nature. Finally, the research calls for a re-orientation of media criminology and suggests more emphasis on the positive implications of crime in the media. Keywords: crime, media, fear of crime, violence, victimization, news

Apreensão e confisco do produto e do instrumento do crime ambiental

Consultoria Legislativa - Área XI - Meio Ambiente, e Direito Ambiental, Organização Territorial, Desenvolvimento Urbano e Regional.

Funcionamento dos guardas municipais nas principais capitais do país, considerando : a. se atuam com poder de polícia; b. se substituem a polícia militar na falta de efetivo desta instituição; c. se auxiliam a polícia militar no combate ao crime; d. se têm porte de arma; e e. se contribuem para a segurança pública

Consultoria Legislativa - Área XVII - Segurança Pública e Defesa Nacional.

A contribuição do parlamento brasileiro na luta contra o tráfico de drogas e o crime organizado

Consultoria Legislativa - Área XVII - Segurança e Defesa Nacional.

O papel da inteligência no combate ao crime organizado transnacional

Apresenta as linhas gerais da estrutura da comunidade de inteligência brasileira e das possibilidades de emprego dos órgãos de inteligência do Brasil no combate ao crime organizado transnacional. Identifica aspectos desse tipo de crime que podem ser neutralizados através da atividade de inteligência. Aborda os seguintes tópicos: origens e desenvolvimento do crime organizado; crimes que alimentam o crime organizado; as atividades do Sistema Brasileiro de Inteligência (SISBIN) e suas necessidades.

Atualização da Sistematização dos Processos de Trabalho da Comissão de Segurança Pública e Combate ao Crime Organizado: Relatório de intervenção

Esse planejamento visa propiciar condições para que a Secretaria da Comissão exerça suas atribuições com eficiência. A CSPCCO é uma Comissão Permanente, cujas atribuições e competências gerais estão previstas na Constituição Federal e no Regimento interno da Câmara dos Deputados. A Comissão permanece inclusive na ausência de membros ou nos recessos, períodos em que fica impedida de deliberar.

A investigação do crime em O dia da coruja e A cada um o seu, de Leonardo Sciascia, e em A forma da água e O ladrão de merendas, de Andrea Camilleri

Esta dissertação tem como objetivo analisar e discutir os romances-ensaios O Dia da Coruja e A Cada um o Seu, de Leonardo Sciascia, em perspectiva comparada com as narrativas policiais A Forma da Água e O Ladrão de Merendas, de Andrea Camilleri, no que diz respeito aos traços estilísticos, históricos e temáticos das obras em foco. Na pesquisa, refletiu-se sobre a utilização da estrutura do romance policial como estratégia de composição empregada pelos dois autores sicilianos, a fim de criticarem a realidade sociopolítica italiana dos últimos 50 anos. Ao final, apontam-se diferenças e identidades existentes entre os citados títulos e se conclui que, L.Sciascia, em tom amargo e incisivo, deu à matéria de seus romances um perfil tanto de narrativa ficcional quanto de ensaio político-filosófico, com o objetivo de denunciar, em seus pseudo-gialli, não apenas crimes, mas, principalmente, a falta de ética no seio da justiça de seu país. Já A.Camilleri eternizou seu perfil de escritor giallista, criando a figura do inspetor Salvo Montalbano e ao lançar mão do recurso do riso sério. Tal artifício não invalidou, ao contrário, sublinhou ironicamente a denúncia a toda forma de criminalidade, de corrupção e de abuso do poder, na fictícia Vigata, espaço imaginário representativo da Sicilia e da Itália