The Social Embeddedness of Organized Crime

Bunt, Henk van de; Siegel, Dina; Zaitch, Damián

doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199730445.013.030

Cited by 35 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 50 publications

(18 reference statements)

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“…A meta-analysis by Besemer et al (2017), which compares 23 datasets including 3.5 million children, shows that children with one or more convicted parents have a 2.4 times higher risk of being convicted themselves. We know that within serious and organised crime networks, families play an important role, for instance because family ties provide trust relations (van de Bunt et al 2014). Generation studies of families involved in organised crime are almost nonexistent, however.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intergenerational transmission and organised crime. A study of seven families in the south of the Netherlands

Spapens

Moors²

2019

Trends Organ Crim

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Kinship ties play an important role in organised crime, but little attention has been paid as yet to criminal families and intergenerational transmission of delinquent behaviour as well as criminal 'leadership.' This paper presents the results of an in-depth study of seven families in the south of the Netherlands that produced a leader of a criminal group in at least one generation. In almost every generation, most male and female members of these families have criminal records, but intergenerational transmission of criminal leadership has so far occurred in only two families. There is a range of risk factors that promote criminal behaviour across generations, but an important explanation is that family members select their partners and friends from their own closed and deviant subcultures, and seem to favour those who have already developed criminal track records. Apart from risk factors at the individual, family and social environment levels, criminal behaviour was also stimulated by the seven families quickly taking advantage of emerging crime markets, particularly ecstasy production and indoor cannabis cultivation from the 1990s onwards.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intergenerational transmission and organised crime. A study of seven families in the south of the Netherlands

Spapens

Moors²

2019

Trends Organ Crim

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“…This was demonstrated in the Montréal cases that illustrated a symbiotic relationship between criminal groups and collusive business owners (cf. Gambetta and Reuter 1995;Passas 2002;van de Bunt et al 2014). In the Dutch inclusive system, there is less of a natural need for a strong arm to enforce the existing power balance of construction firms in the industry.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Building on this, Ruggiero (1996) purposes a joint analysis using organisational theory for the often conceptually distinguished phenomena of white-collar and organised crimes. Social networks around serious crimes for gain are known to involve interactions between 'licit' and 'illicit' services and 'formal' and 'informal' economies (Passas 2002;van de Bunt et al 2014;Lippens & Ponsaers 2006;Ruggiero 1997;van Duyne 1995van Duyne , 1996. Different types of relationships between organised crime and legitimate business, or upper-and underworld are distinguished (van Duyne et al 2002).…”

Section: Government Replacement and Protection Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Business cartels and organised crime: exclusive and inclusive systems of collusion

Jaspers

2018

Trends Organ Crim

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In this article, two case studies of large-scale bid rigging in the construction industry in Canada and the Netherlands are analysed to explore why business cartels sometimes do and sometimes do not involve organised crime. By combining concepts from both organised crime and organisational crime, an integrated understanding of the organisation of serious crimes for gain is applied. Across time and space, businesses in the construction industry are known to fix prices, use collusive tendering and divide market shares in illegal cartel agreements. In order to stabilise cartels, participants need to ward off new competitors and prevent cheating within the cartel. The question why we see a system of collusion involving organised crime and violence in Canada as opposed to the Netherlands is answered through analysing two comparable cases. This article finds two systems of bid rigging emerge under different cultural conditions: inclusive and exclusive collusion. The exclusive system makes use of the violent reputation provided by criminal groups and distinguishes from the inclusive system that uses sophisticated administration of mutual claims in shadow bookkeeping.

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“…Or does it make them more vulnerable to suspicion and detection? An alternative explanation is that neither isolation nor exclusion but the social embeddedness of crime and criminal networks protects its members against detection [30,56,57]. Scholars have suggested that most crime is committed within an informed and even cooperative social environment [58,59].…”

Section: Criminal Network and Social Embeddednessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In other words, to answer the question how cartels succeed in hiding their activities from outsiders for long periods of time, the relation of the cartel and its participants with their social environment is also important. In the existing literature, the concept of social embeddedness is used to describe this process [51,52,57]. Social embeddedness entails both structural and relational embeddedness.…”

Section: Criminal Network and Social Embeddednessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strong by concealment? How secrecy, trust, and social embeddedness facilitate corporate crime

Jaspers

2019

Crime Law Soc Change

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This article examines how corporate crime is organised through studying the longevity of illegal business cartels. Previous studies demonstrate cartels can remain undetected for years or decades. Similar to criminal networks, cartel participants need to communicate in order to collaborate effectively, but operate covertly at the same time. The case study analysis of fourteen Dutch cartel cases in this study demonstrates two main findings. First, cartel participants communicate frequently and elaborately, and the need for trust and communication impedes concealment. Second, the longevity of cartels cannot be explained by isolation from but by embeddedness in their social environment. The context of legitimacy and a facilitating environment are significant factors. Criminal collaboration is studied extensively in literature on organised crime, however gained little attention in the literature on corporate crime. Hereby, this study contributes to an understanding of how corporate criminal conduct is organised, by applying relevant theory on criminal networks gleaned from the literature on organised crime.

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The Social Embeddedness of Organized Crime

Cited by 35 publications

References 50 publications

Intergenerational transmission and organised crime. A study of seven families in the south of the Netherlands

Intergenerational transmission and organised crime. A study of seven families in the south of the Netherlands

Business cartels and organised crime: exclusive and inclusive systems of collusion

Strong by concealment? How secrecy, trust, and social embeddedness facilitate corporate crime

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