Political Crime In Europe

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1979.

This volume represents the first attempt to systematically compare organised crime concepts, as well as historical and contemporary patterns and control policies in thirteen European countries. These include seven ‘old’ EU Member States, two ‘new’ members, a candidate country, and three non-EU countries. Based on a standardised research protocol, thirty-three experts from different legal and social disciplines provide insight through detailed country reports. On this basis, the editors compare organised crime patterns and policies in Europe and assess EU initiatives against organised crime.

In Corruption and Organised Crime in Europe, Gounev and Ruggiero present a discussion of the relation between organized criminals and corruption in the EU’s 27 Member States. The book draws on research and scholarly work the editors carried out, respectively, within the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD) in Bulgaria, and within academic institutions, as well as on behalf of the European Commission and the United Nations. Combining empirical data and theoretical debates, the book focuses on three main areas of the relationship between corruption and organised crime: public bodies, the private sector and criminal markets. It presents the findings of a recent research project carried out by the CSD on behalf of the European Commission, providing an analysis of the specific national contexts in which corruption and organized crime thrive. The essays also address institutional responses and policies, focusing particularly on how EU Member States attempt to sever the links between the official economy, the political sphere and organized crime. The second part of the book presents case studies, written by some of the foremost international experts on the subject matter, analysing corrupt exchange and criminal organisations, concentrating on specific European countries – Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy, Russia, Spain and the UK. As the first comprehensive study of corruption and organised crime in the countries of the European Union, the book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of criminology, sociology, law and international politics, as well policy makers and law-enforcement agencies.

Concerns over insecurity have become central issues in political debates across Europe and the western world, and crucial changes have followed in the wake of these concerns. This book contributes to an understanding of these developments.

Understanding the politics of security in city-regions is increasingly important for the study of contemporary policing. This book argues that national and international governing arrangements are being outflanked by various transnational threats, including the cross-border terrorism of the attacks on Paris in 2015 and Brussels in 2016; trafficking in people, narcotics and armaments; cybercrime; the deregulation of global financial services; and environmental crime. Metropolises are the focal points of the transnational networks through which policing problems are exported and imported across national borders, as they provide much of the demand for illicit markets and are the principal engines generating other policing challenges including political protest and civil unrest. This edited collection examines whether and how governing arrangements rooted in older systems of national sovereignty are adapting to these transnational challenges, and considers problems of and for policing in city-regions in the European Union and its single market. Bringing together experts from across the continent, Policing European Metropolises develops a sociology of urban policing in Europe and a unique methodology for comparing the experiences of different metropolises in the same country. This book will be of value to police researchers in Europe and abroad, as well as postgraduate students with an interest in policing and urban policy.

Will the European Union soon have a policing agency similar to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation? John Occhipinti traces the evolution of the European Police Office (Europol), bringing to life themes key to the study of European integration such as: the tension between supranationalism and intergovernmentalism; concerns over the democratic deficit in the EU; and the impact of enlargement.

This publication contains a number of papers which highlight examples of good practice in relation to criminal policy in member states of the Council of Europe, set out under the headlines of: crime prevention, mediation and other community sanctions, the prison system, and criminal procedure. Many of the papers are written by members of the Criminological Scientific Council of the Council of Europe (CSC).

This book provides a synthesis of recent research on the history of crime and criminal justice in Europe from the mid-18th to the mid-20th centuries. It tackles the subject chronologically, paying due attention to the evolving economic, social, and political aspects of the continent over the two centuries. It addresses specifically the different forms of criminal offending and the changing interpretations and understandings of that offending at both elite and popular levels. It explores how both old regimes and the new nation states, that emerged in the early 19th century, responded to criminal activity with the development of police forces and the refinement of forms of punishment.