The Current State Of Organized Crime And The Rationale For Considering Its Primary Priority Of The U.S. Law Enforcement

Abstract

The paper argues the current state of organized crime and the rationale for considering it a primary priority of U.S. Law Enforcement. In the last three decades, organized crime and technology have grown rapidly at a similar velocity to globalization. The global integration of world economy, politics, and society through Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has ushered a new wave of organized crime where the enemy is necessarily not within the national boundaries but rather resides outside the boundaries spatially. The paper highlights Albanese’s (2002) recommendations in the light of modern organized crime and technology status, which relies on improving data collection quality, utilization of a team approach for gathering information, application of the risk assessment instrument for supplementing law enforcement efforts, understanding of the instrument’s parameters, and implementation efforts of law and policy reflecting organized crime risk assessment. The paper concludes with policy recommendations for adopting Big Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence for the estimation and mitigation of events that seem isolated but are linked to a network of organized crime.

Fighting Organize Crime: The Primary Priority of the U.S. Law Enforcement

Introduction

Organized Crime, and specifically the transnational nature of organized crime, is a serious threat to the Global Stability, along with the national security of the United States. The closer integration of the global economy, open borders, and widespread adoption of the internet have paved the way for the sophisticated and complex structure of organized crime. The difference between organized crime in previous decades and the digital age is the nature of the threat, which is spatially no longer limited to within the borders. Technology for the prediction and mitigation of crime events has evolved over the last three to four decades, and U.S. law enforcement is better equipped with the adoption of new technologies for ensuring peace and stability at the national and global levels. Organized crime can be effectively anticipated, intervened, and prevented with efficient information on offenders, victims, and police, as well as with the adaptation of information and communication technologies, such as Big Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence.

Analysis

The primary priority of U.S. Law Enforcement is fighting organised crime. The primary target of organized crime is national security and the economy, and the level at which they now operate at the transnational level. A long history of the fight against organised crime in the United States supplements the adoption of specific federal laws, along with government agencies that first-hand confront a range of criminal activities. The law enforcement agency responsible for dealing with organised crime is “The Department of Justice,” coupled with two main bodies, DEA and FBI, although coordination with other departments exists on a routine basis. The widespread scale and impact of International Organised Crime requires a coordinated effort on behalf of local, state, and federal level agencies. In order to fight organised crime, task forces, intelligence centres, and working groups exist under the jurisdiction of various departments. Additionally, the major coordinating structure for the fight against organised crime is the network of “Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force Programme” and “The International Organized Crime Intelligence and Operations Centre”.

A series of legislation exist, beginning with the Federal Anti-Racketeering Act (the ‘Hobbs Act’) in 1946, and the most recent of the Acts in this direction is the “United States Patriot Act (2001)” and “Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act (2009)”. The time and resources with law enforcement are scarce, and efficient utilization of human and physical capital means prioritizing tasks at the direction of public needs. For example, CATO Institute’s Criminal Justice Survey suggest that Americans top three priorities for law enforcement agencies, police to be specific, are investigating violent crime (78%), protecting from violent crime (64%), Investigating property crime or robbery (58%), and enforcing drug laws (30%). Most of the crimes mentioned above directly or indirectly fall into the category of organized crime, which is a serious threat to global stability and national security. In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, coupled with other failed states, organized criminal networks and groups have cashed on the problems (Denley and Ariel, 2019).

Rationale: Why the U.S. Government Adopt the Policy?

The world is increasingly integrating faster than ever before due to the internet and digital technologies. Organized groups in the aftermath of the Soviet Collapse and the recent “War against Terror” have created a new form of sophisticated network that requires the adoption of modern technologies. In modern times, a State’s sovereignty is retained when it has the advantage of technological means vis-à-vis possible threats. Organized crime is a serious threat due to the heavy reliance of offenders on technology networks. For instance, as per Business Standard media house, some companies operating out of the US are allegedly linked with security agencies of their respective country that are supposed to have a part in U.S. Election riggings. Not only at the political level, organized crime is happening in a similar way to money laundering, drug and human trafficking, and violence. The utilization of Big Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence can be extremely useful when integrated into the processes of law enforcement.

Action Plan and Recommendation:

Albanese (2002) published an article in the Journal of Trends in Organized Crime and mentioned the following five ways in which the control and prediction of organized crime for the anticipation, investigation, and prevention of events that might otherwise seem isolated events:

1. Improving the quality of data collection.
2. Utilization of a team approach for gathering information
3. Application of “risk assessment instrument” that supplements the effort of law enforcement.
4. Additionally, I need to understand the parameters of the aforementioned instrument.
5. Law and Policy implementation efforts need to be reflected in the organized crime risk assessment.

The policy proposal aims to adopt Big Data and Artificial Intelligence as part of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) initiative to counter events of organized crime. The underlying feature and pattern of organized crime is connecting the crime to the network of organized crime. Albanese’s (2002) research findings assist in analyzing the isolated incidents in connection to organized crime, that is, through high-quality information on victims, offenders, and police with the collaboration of researchers, investigators and analysts. Pramanik et al. (2017) argue that the application of data analytics technology can improve the effectiveness of security and criminal investigation, which, over the last three decades, has matured to produce criminal analytics. The big data has state-of-the-art technologies that are reshaping law enforcement’s investigation processes with a criminal analytics framework. In a similar way, Feng et al. (2019) also argue the effectiveness of adopting big data analytics and mining techniques for picturing and predicting the trends in crime data.

Conclusion

The surveys suggesting public opinion suggest that the top priority of U.S. law enforcement should be to control the isolated events often linked to organized crime. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, newly formed fragile states and groups have grown in the age of technology and gained sophisticated techniques. The paper illustrates the link between companies operating from South Asia and the Russian attempt to rig the U.S. Election. The integration of society and economy has resulted in governments adopting modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to predict, investigate, and prevent isolated events. The overemphasis on terrorism has deprived policy of the more serious issue of organized crime, which could be mitigated. Modern technologies like Big Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence can be used to monitor, predict, and collect information on the events of organized crime.

References

Albanese, J. S. (2001). The prediction and control of organized crime: A risk assessment instrument for targeting law enforcement efforts. Trends in Organized Crime, 6(3), 4-29.

Denley, J., & Ariel, B. (2019). Whom should we target to prevent? Analysis of organized crime in England using intelligence records. European journal of crime, criminal law and criminal justice, 27(1), 13-44.

Feng, M., Zheng, J., Ren, J., Hussain, A., Li, X., Xi, Y., & Liu, Q. (2019). Big data analytics and mining for effective visualization and trends forecasting of crime data. IEEE Access, 7, 106111-106123.

Pramanik, M. I., Lau, R. Y., Yue, W. T., Ye, Y., & Li, C. (2017). Big data analytics for security and criminal investigations. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 7(4), e1208.

US on alert after link found between a state govt website, ISI-linked firm. (2020, December 7). Business Standard India. https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/us-on-alert-after-link-found-between-a-state-govt-website-isi-linked-firm-120120700146_1.html