Organised Crime and Economic Criminality

Code:

C313

Acronym:

CORCE

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	Criminology

Instance: 2023/2024 - 1S

Active?	Yes
Course/CS Responsible:	Criminology

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
C	47	Oficial Study Plan LC 2023	3	-	6	-
		Oficial Study Plan LC	3	-	6	-
		Oficial Study Plan LC 2023	3	-	6	-

Teaching language

Suitable for English-speaking students

Objectives

This curricular unit (CU) is developed around two complementary axes - organized crime and economic crime.

With this CU we aim to present the main theoretical and empirical elements associated to both axes, providing students with the tools to make a critical discussion of the forms that these crimes take and the formal and informal reaction to them.

For this purpose, in an integrated way, students are exposed to:

- the fundamental concepts of organized crime and economic crime and their application in criminological discourse;

- the interdisciplinary nature of research on organized crime and white-collar crime;

- criminal justice policies and policing strategies against organized crime and economic crime;

- examples of organized crime and economic crime in external contexts and in Portugal;

- the specificities of white-collar and economic crime in relation to other forms of crime;

- the latest quantitative techniques for analyzing organized crime networks.

Learning outcomes and competences

After attending classes and studying the program of this curricular unit, in general terms, students are expected to be able to sustain a critical discussion about the forms taken by economic and financial criminality and organized crime, as well as about the formal and informal social reaction. In specific terms, it is intended that students:

- Be able to discuss forms of articulation, in the practices and theoretical and empirical investigation, between the two manifestations of crime.

- Regarding economic criminality, it is expected that students be able to:

• Identify the existing conceptualizations on the phenomenon;
• Apply the explanatory theories advanced by the most relevant literature;
• Identify the victimization and associated damages;
• Identify the methodological specificities in the empirical investigation around the phenomenon;
• Develop critical analysis skills on the relation of these crimes to legitimate professional and economic activities.

- Regarding organized crime, it is expected that students be able to:

• Discuss the criminological and legal framework of organized crime;
• Understand and discuss ways to identify and assess organized crime;
• Critically identify how organized crime is represented in the regulatory framework;
• Discuss the costs of organized crime, demonstrating mastery of the use of the most appropriate methodologies in estimating the value of the damage caused by organized crime;
• Discuss the explanatory theories of organized crime;
• Refer to the most recent contributions in the study of the phenomenon, namely the use of criminal network analysis;
• Explain the most important measures of centrality that allow us to understand the role and importance of each individual (agent) in the network, and also to make use of software to analyze criminal networks;
• Understand and explain the frameworks, strategies and instruments for preventive and repressive intervention on organized crime;
• Explore new advances in understanding the phenomenon – the usefulness of adopting a gender perspective when considering organized crime.

Working method

Presencial

Pre-requirements (prior knowledge) and co-requirements (common knowledge)

n.a.

Program

PART A - ECONOMIC CRIME

Chapter I – Introduction
1. C and definitions, from the original concept of White-collar crime by Sutherland, to its current form, including concepts such as occupational, organisational, corporate and finance crime.
2. Economic crimes in the P criminal code and other laws.
3. The importance of Criminological research: methodological challenges; empirical results on incidence, frequency, individual and organisational risk factors, systemic risk factors, effectiveness and deterrence from sentences.

Chapter II - Harms and victimisation:
1. Social, economic, individual and environmental harms and consequences
2. Public perception a seriousness and punitivity;
3. Victims: unequal distribution of risks and harms, diffuse victimisation and vulnerability of specific groups. 

Chapter III: Theories 
1. From classical criminological approaches to the most recent ones
2. Differential Association Theory
3. Anomie Theory.
4. Rational Choice theory.
5. Neutralization techniques

Chapter IV: The offender
1. The socio-demographic features of individual offenders; the particular case of corporations and organisations who commit crimes.
2. Criminal careers and developmental perspectives
3. The connection between crime, power, trust, elite and social status.
4. The connection between crime and legitimate occupational and economic activities

Chapter V: Challenges in law enforcement
1. The process of criminalization
2. The criminal (and administrative) justice system: crime detection, investigation and sentencing.
3. The effectiveness of sentences

Conceptual and theoretical debates; the white-collar criminal; nature and features of white-collar crime; sources of data for researching white-collar crime; methodological challenges and results of empirical research about white-collar crime; victims of white-collar crime; individual and organizational responsibility in white-collar crime; some current examples.

  

PART B - ORGANIZED CRIME

 

Chapter I – Introduction

1 – Introduction

2 – Social representations about organized crime

3 – Organized crime by the media

4 – Institutional interest and concern

5 – Interest in Academia

6 – For a definition of organized crime

7 – Crimes and organized crime

8 – Legal framework

 

Chapter II – Organized crime harm

1 – Introduction

2 – Costs of crime – basic concepts

3 – Methodologies for estimating the costs of crime

4 – Estimation of the harm produced by organized crime

 

Chapter III – Structure of organized crime

1 – Organized crime – history and social and institutional attention

2 – OC – the concept built in the time (structure and activities)

3 – Basic attributes of organized crime nowadays

4 – Signals of organized crime

 

Chapter IV – Explanatory theories of organized crime

1 – Introduction

2 – Strain and anomie

3 – Theory of Social Control

4 – Subcultures

5 – Differential Opportunity Theory

6 – Differential Association Theory

7 – Rational Choice Theory

8 – Organized crime and weak States

 

Chapter V – Gender, Family, and organized crime

1 – The gender dimension in crime

2 – Women in organized crime groups

3 – Familiar connections inside an OC group

 

Chapter VI – Cooperation in criminal investigation

1 – National cooperation

2 – International cooperation

 

Chapter VII – Criminal Network Analysis

1 – Introduction

2 – Criminal networks

3 – Analysis of criminal networks

4 – Applications with software (Social Network Visualizer).

Mandatory literature

Abadinsky Howard 1941-; Organized crime. ISBN: 978-1-133-49107-1
Benson Michael L.; Understanding white-collar crime. ISBN: 978-0-415-70403-8
Cruz José Manuel Neves 1965- 340; Infrações económicas e financeiras. ISBN: 978-972-32-2170-1
Friedrichs David O.; Trusted criminals. ISBN: 978-0-495-60082-4
Morselli Carlo 1969-; Inside criminal networks. ISBN: 978-1-4419-1861-1
Geis Gilbert; White-collar crime. ISBN: 0-02-911590-6
Shapland Joanna 340; The^informal economy and connections with organised crime. ISBN: 978-90-8974-164-6
Simpson Sally S. 340; The^criminology of white-collar crime. ISBN: 978-0-387-09501-1
Slyke Shanna R. van 340; The^Oxford handbook of white-collar crime. ISBN: 978-0-19-992551-3
Van Erp Judith 340; The^routledge handbook of white-collar and corporate crime in Europe. ISBN: 978-0-415-72214-8
White, Rob; Heckenberg, Diane; Green criminology. ISBN: 9780415632102
Kevin Albertson; Crime and economics. ISBN: 978-1-84392-842-3
Klaus von Lampe; Organized crime. ISBN: 978-1-4522-0350-8
Sousa, Pedro; "Análise de Redes de Crime Organizado". Investigação Criminal, Ciências Criminais e Forenses – IC3F, No. 4, pp. 43-61, 2019 (Article provided by the teacher)
Leal, José; "Sociedade, governança e manifestações criminais sobre a forma de crime organizado - Conhecer para intervir. in Agra, C. & Torrão, F. (eds.) "Criminalidade organizada e económica (pespetivas jurídica, política e criminológica), Universidade Lusíada, 2018. ISBN: 978-989-640-219-8 (Article provided by the teacher)
Albanese, J. (2000); The causes of organized crime: do criminals organize around opportunities for crime or do criminal opportunities create new offenders? Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 16(4), 409-423. https://doi.org/10.1177/1043986200016004004, 2000
Calderoni, F., & Superchi, E. (2019). ; The nature of organized crime leadership: criminal leaders in meeting and wiretap networks. Crime, Law and Social Change, 72, 419–444. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-019-09829-6
Calderoni, F., Campedelli, GM., Comunale, T., Marchesi, M., & Savona, E. (2020). ; Recruitment into organised criminal groups: A systematic review. Trends &issues in Crime and criminal justice (n.º 583). Australian Institute of Criminology
Calderoni, F., Superchi, E., Comunale, T., Campedelli, G.M., Marchesi, M., & Frualdo, N. (2019). ; PROTOCOL: Organised crime groups: A systematic review of individual-leval risk factors related to recruitement. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 15(1-2): e1022
Savona, E., & Riccardi, M. (2018). (Eds.). ; Mapping the risk of serious and organised crime infiltration in european businesses. Final report of the MORE project. Transcrime, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. (http://www.transcrime.it/more)
Savona, E., Calderoni, F., Superchi, E., Comunale, T., Campedelli, G.M., Marchesi, M., & Kamprad, A. (2017). ; Systematic review of the social, psychological and economic factors relating to criminalisation and recruitment to OC. In E. Savona (Coord.). D1.1 Report on factors relating to OC. PROTON
Varese, F. (2010). ; What is Organised Crime. Critical Concepts in Criminology (vol. 1, pp. 11-33). Routledge
Rita Jorge Holbeche Tinoco de Faria; Research misconduct as white-collar crime. ISBN: 978-3-319-73434-7
Brian K. Payne; White-collar crime. ISBN: 978-1-0718-3390-2
Nicholas Lord; European white-collar crime. ISBN: 978-1-5292-1232-7
Eliomar da Silva Pereira; Criminalidade organizada. ISBN: 978-85-8493-201-6

Complementary Bibliography

Antoine-Grégoire Jean-Louis; The^European Union and the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime. ISBN: 92-823-1628-9
Edwards Adam 340; Transnational organised crime. ISBN: 0-415-40339-1
Newburn Tim 340; Handbook of policing. ISBN: 978-1-84392-323-7

Comments from the literature

Other references will be made available throghout the semester

Teaching methods and learning activities

Theoretical-practical classes: Presentation and analysis of the programmatic contents with the use of slides and inclusion of periods for discussion. Case study and applied content analysis of curricular unit.

 

Software

Social Network Visualizer
Gephi

keywords

Social sciences > Criminology
Social sciences > Economics

Evaluation Type

Evaluation with final exam

Assessment Components

Designation	Weight (%)
Exame	100,00
Total:	100,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

Designation	Time (hours)
Estudo autónomo	102,00
Frequência das aulas	60,00
Total:	162,00

Eligibility for exams

Cf. Knowledge evaluation regulation of this cycle of study.

Calculation formula of final grade

A minimum grade of 10/20 in the written final exam.

Examinations or Special Assignments

Cf. Knowledge evaluation regulation of this cycle of study.

Internship work/project

n.a.

Special assessment (TE, DA, ...)

Cf. Knowledge evaluation regulation of this cycle of study.

Classification improvement

Cf. Knowledge evaluation regulation of this cycle of study.