About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

5 Eur. J. Criminology 5 (2008)

handle is hein.journals/eujcrim5 and id is 1 raw text is: Volume 5 (1): 5-12: 1477-3708 DOI: 10.1177/1477370807084222 European Copyright 0 2008 European Society of Criminology and SAGE Publications Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore Criminology www.sagepublications.com Introduction to Special Issue Organized Crime, Terrorism and European Criminology Edward R. Kleemans Research and Documentation Centre (WODC), The Netherlands This is the first of a series of thematic special issues of European Journal of Criminology. We selected organized crime and terrorism as a key topic for both social science and policy. Over the past two decades, the policy agenda in many European countries and in the European Union has been dominated by concerns about organized crime, recently followed by even greater anguish over terrorism, triggered by the tragic events in New York (2001), Madrid (2004) and London (2005). Yet the abundance of political, public and media attention is not paralleled by a similar abundance of sound empirical research on these topics (see, for a review, e.g. Fijnaut and Paoli 2004; Silke 2004; Dorn et al. 2005; Lum et al. 2006; Neve et al. 2006; Ranstorp 2006).1 For instance, Lum et al. (2006: 33) note that, although there has been a proliferation of anti- terrorism programmes and policies, along with massive increases in expend- iture on combating terrorism, we know almost nothing about the effectiveness of any of these activities. Concerns about organized crime are of a relatively recent date. In many European countries, organized crime began to be seen as a serious problem only in the late 1980s or early 1990s. The exception is Italy, where the prob- lem has a longer history (e.g. Paoli 2003). Fijnaut and Paoli (2004: 1-18) demonstrate that many European countries show a remarkable synchron- icity in waves of political attention to organized crime and measures for combating it. Of course, every country has its own 'triggering events' and its own national history, yet several broader 'European' developments 1 In this introduction I will not attempt to review all the literature on organized crime and ter- rorism. Much of the relevant research is published in specialist journals such as Crime, Law and Social Change, Global Crime (succeeding Transnational Organized Crime) and Trends in Organized Crime. For terrorism research, the major journals are Terrorism and Political Violence and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most