Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Global Terror and Organised Crime: Symbiotic or Synonymous?

  • Published:
Asian Journal of Criminology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. The notion and nature of terrorism generalised throughout this paper is concerned with violent attacks on state and alliance institutions and ideologies. It is not interested in terrorist violence that is employed directly for economic motives or that which is an extension of violence as a tool or organised criminal enterprise within black market counter-economies (see Findlay 1999, Chap. 5).

  2. For a discussion of the deep state and para politics, see Tunander 2006.

  3. Examples are provided in Reno 2006.

  4. These benefits may have the common outcome of overturning state authority but may be motivated by distinctly different purposes and often with opposing eventual expectations.

  5. This is not new. An examination of the historical literature on the triads in Nationalist China clearly locates the connection between organised crime organisations and financing with contesting political movements.

  6. The link between organised crime and terrorism is not necessarily a new phenomenon. On the contrary, the earliest identified manifestations of organised crime in Europe, China, and even Japan, demonstrated a motivation to undermine and overthrow established rule. In fact, triads were, at the turn of the nineteenth century, bound up with the Nationalist struggle in China. The difference today is that the international nature of organised crime as terrorism is clearly directed against global political cultures, influences and domination.

  7. Due to limitations of space, enterprise theory is introduced only as a preferred paradigm for distinguishing the economic motivations of organised crime from the ideological and political imperatives of global terrorism.

  8. Some argue that without the strange conflation between fundamental Islamists and the neo-conservatives in the United States (and the terror that emerges from this) then the disengagement from conventional politics would be much more universal. (See the documentary ‘The Power of Nightmares’ screened by SBS Television in 2007).

  9. In their common law and legislative forms in New South Wales, or as protected through the administrative guidelines governing police practice.

  10. Volkov’s (2002) intriguing examination of the place of protection and extortion rackets in the emerging Russian private marketplace exemplifies this trend.

  11. Indeed, it seems that organised ‘philanthropic’ contributions from ‘off-shore’ communities play a more significant and constant role in financing organisations and movements suspected of terrorist involvement.

  12. See the discussion of the favelas in Brazil—Findlay and Zvekic 1993.

  13. This also gives weight to Napoleoni’s caution that the distinction between state and non-state actors may be false and misleading. In some situations alleged terror organisations such as the PLO and Hamas have larger and more community interconnected bureaucracies and finances than do the ‘shell states’ in which they locate (Napoleoni 2005, p 67).

  14. For a brief outline of recent Commonwealth legislative and administrative activity in the area of national security see Findlay et al. 2005 pp 100–105.

  15. This rhetoric is picked up and promoted by Australian enforcement agencies with a brief to investigate organised crime—see National Crime Authority 1996, Annual Report, NCA, Melbourne

  16. In referring to a problem as global, the interpretations of Galtung (1995, p 29) are useful:

    • global in the sense of “worldwide”, being shared by a high number of societies

    • global in the sense of “world-interconnected”, with causal loops spanning the whole world

    • global in the sense of “world-system”, applying to world society as such.

References

  • Baumann, Z. (1998). Globalisation: The human consequences. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Block, A. A. (Ed.) (1991). Perspectives on organising crime: Essays in opposition. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

  • Block, A. A., & Chambliss, W. (1981). Organising crime. New York: Elsevier.

  • Box, S. (1983). Power, crime and mystification. London: Tavistock.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burchfield, K. (1978). The economic organisation of crime: A study of the development of criminal enterprise. Criminal Law Quarterly, 20(4), 478–512.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chambliss, W. (1989). State organised crime. Criminology, 27(2), 103–208.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cressey, D. (1969). Theft of a nation. New York: Harper and Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dickie, P. (1994). Organised crime: Towards a research-regulatory approach to organised crime. In D. Chappell, & P. Wilson (Eds.) The Australian criminal justice system: The mid 1990’s. Sydney: Butterworths.

    Google Scholar 

  • Findlay, M. (1986). Organised crime as terrorism. Australian Quarterly, 58(3), 286–296.

    Google Scholar 

  • Findlay, M. (1992). The Mafia mystique. Criminal Organisations, 7(3), 3–17.

    Google Scholar 

  • Findlay, M. (1994). Breaking the crime-control nexus: Market models of corruption and opportunity. In D. Chappell, & P. Wilson (Eds.) The Australian criminal justice system: The mid 1990’s. Sydney: Butterworths.

    Google Scholar 

  • Findlay, M. (1995). International rights and Australian adaptations: Recent developments in criminal investigation. Sydney Law Review, 17(2), 278–297.

    Google Scholar 

  • Findlay, M. (1999). The globalisation of crime. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Findlay, M. (2000). Crime and globalisation: An Australian organised crime? In D. Chappell, & P. Wilson (Eds.) Crime and the criminal justice system in Australia: 2000 and Beyond. Sydney: Butterworths.

    Google Scholar 

  • Findlay, M. (2001). Synthesis in trial proceedures? The experience of criminal tribunals. International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 50(1), 26–53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Findlay, M. (2003). Crime, terror and transitional cultures in a contracting globe. In C. Dauvergne (Ed.) Jurisprudence for an Interconnected Globe. Aldershot: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Findlay, M. (2004). Globalisation of crime: Terror in a contracting globe. In V. George, & R. Page (Eds.) Global social problems. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Findlay, M. (2008). Governing through globalised crime: Futures for international criminal justice. Cullompton: Willan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Findlay, M., & Henham, R. (2005). Transforming international criminal justice: Retributive and restorative justice in the trial process. Cullompton: Willan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Findlay, M., Odgers, S., & Yeo, S. (2005). Australian criminal justice (3rd ed.). Melbourne: OUP.

    Google Scholar 

  • Findlay, M., & Zvekic, U. (1993). Alternative policing styles. Deventer: Kluwer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fiorentini, G., & Peltzman, S. (1995). The economics of organised crime. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Galtung, J. (1995). On the social costs of modernization: Social disintegration, atomie/anomie and social development. United Nations Research Institute For Social Development (UNRISD) Discussion Paper, Geneva.

  • Gilpin, R. (1987). The political economy of international relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hester, S., & Elgin, P. (1992). A sociology of crime. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Matza, D. (1964). Delinquency and drift. New York: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCoy, A. W. (1973) The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. New York: Harper Colophon

  • McCulloch, J. (2003). “Counter-terrorism”, human security and Globalisation—from welfare to warfare state. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 14(3), 283–298.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCulloch, J., et al. (2004). Suppressing the financing of terrorism. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 16(1), 71–78.

    Google Scholar 

  • Napoleoni, L. (2005). Terror incorporated: Tracing the dollars behind the terror networks. New York: Seven Stories.

    Google Scholar 

  • National Crime Authority. (1996). Annual Report. Melbourne: NCA

  • Passas, N., & Nelken, D. (1993). The thin blue line between legitimate and criminal enterprises: Subsidy frauds in the European community. Crime, Law and Social Change, 3, 223–244.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Poynting, S., et al. (2004). Bin Laden in the suburbs: Crimnalising the Arab other. Sydney: Institute of Criminology Monograph Series.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reno, W. (2006). Redefining Statehood in the Global Periphery (unpublished conference paper).

  • Robb, P. (1996). Midnight in Sicily. Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, D. (1975). The Mafia mystique. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tan, M. (2003). Money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Journal of Banking and Finance Law and Practice, 14(2), 81–107.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tunander, O. (2006). Democratic state vs deep state approaching the dual state of the west (unpublished conference paper).

  • Van Duyne, P. (1993). Organised Crime and Business-crime Enterprises in the Netherlands. Crime, Law and Social Change, 19, 103–142.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van Duyne, P. (1996). The phantom and threat of organised crime. Crime, Law and Social Change, 24, 341–377.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Viano, E. (Ed) (1999). Global organised crime and international security. Aldershot: Ashgate.

  • Volkov, V. (2002). Violent entrepreneurs: The use of force in the making of Russian capitalism. Ithica N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Criminology, University of Sydney, 173-175 Phillip St., Sydney, NSW, 2000, Australia

    Mark James Findlay

Authors
  1. Mark James Findlay
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mark James Findlay.

Additional information

This paper is not a detailed denial of the difference between organised crime as the aggregation of illicit wealth, and terrorism which may not be concerned with economic profit. It takes as given the primary political context for terrorism and the enterprise environment of organised crime.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Findlay, M.J. Global Terror and Organised Crime: Symbiotic or Synonymous?. Asian Criminology 3, 75–89 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-008-9052-5

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-008-9052-5

Keywords

Search

Navigation