Defining and Defying Organised Crime : Discourse, Perceptions and Reality

Organized crime is now a major threat to all industrial and non-industrial countries. Using an inter-disciplinary and comparative approach this book examines the nature of this threat. By analysing the existing, official institutional discourse on organized crime it examines whether or not it has an impact on perceptions of the threat and on the reality of organized crime.

The book first part of the book explores both the paradigm and the rationale of policy output in the fight against organized crime, and also exposes the often ‘hidden’ internal assumptions embedded in policy making. The second part examines the perceptions of organized crime as expressed by various actors, for example, the general public in the Balkans and in Japan, the criminal justice system in USA and circles within the international scientific community. Finally, the third part provides an overall investigation into the realities of organized crime with chapters that survey its empirical manifestations in various parts of the world.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, criminology, security studies and practitioners.

Felia Allum is Lecturer in Politics and Italian at the University of Bath, UK. She is co-editor of Organized Crime and the Challenge to Democracy (also published by Routledge).

Francesca Longo is Professor of Political Science and Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Public Policy at the University of Catania, Italy 

Daniela Irrera is Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Catania, Italy.

Panos A. Kostakos is a doctoral candidate at the University of Bath, UK