Organized Crime: Fictions and Policies
Organized Crime: Fictions and Policies

Summary/Abstract: Organized crime is a notion as powerful as other key concepts that are shaping the modern policy mindset, such as ‘corruption’, ‘good governance’, ‘human security’, ‘ethnic groups and relations’, ‘civil society’, etc. Yet, as this paper argues, there is something deeply wrong with the way the phenomenon of organized crime has been conceptually grasped and strategically developed. The very possibility that something like crime may get organized and thus acquire the status of social organization, is remarkable. However, all current reductionist approaches to it have massively missed that point. This basic condition – how crime becomes a form of social organization – should be examined in a very focused, open, and resolute way. It is time to carry out a critical study of its conceptual basis, of the deep presuppositions, and of their farreaching policy implications as regards such a high societal risk as is the organization of crime.

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