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30 Aust. & N.Z. J. Criminology 1 (1997)

handle is hein.journals/anzjc30 and id is 1 raw text is: 












    Evaluating the 'New Policing': Attacking

      the Money Trail of Organized Crime*

                             Michael   Levit

   After examining the growth of concern about organized crime, the article
   critically reviews the arguments advanced for focusing on the money trail as
   a strategy for combating it, suggesting that the amount of money laundered
   may  be  considerably less than that commonly  assumed.  It goes on  to
   contrast the powerful imagery of 'the new policing' with the modesty of the
   impact of these measures on convictions and confiscated assets in Britain
   and Australia, and attempts to account for the low yield there compared with
   the  US  in terms  of greater American  concentration on  financial and
   professional intermediaries and more draconian legislation. After discussing
   the debate over the involvement of the UK Security Service (M15) in the 'war
   against organized  crime' and technological developments  in laundering
   detection, the article examines the tensions, (a) between high level policing
   on the one hand, and devolved police budgeting and community orientation
   on the other; and (b) in the attempt to regulate the social conscience of
   finance capital without making it impossible for them to make a profit.

                             Introduction

During the 1990s, a 'moral panic' has spread around many parts of the globe,
including the 'emerging' post-Communist  nations themselves, about:
     (i) 'organized crime', including the  alien threat posed, (a) by  the
         collapse of the former Soviet Union in the form of the (presumed
         new) 'Russian Mafia, as well as (b) by Chinese Triads (much feared
         around  the world, including Australasia, but latterly viewed by
         former Chinese Vice Premier  Deng  Xiao-Ping in a 1995 television
         interview as a 'patriotic social group'); and
     (ii) though not for the first time, about 'the drugs problem', a perception
         increasingly shared in drug producer countries.
  As  is the case with most moral panics, there is an empirical core which
reasonably induces fear and concern, but perceptions of the ways in which
crimes are organized become  distorted in the process of social construction
(van Duyne   1996), a  tendency that is exacerbated by  the uncertain and
malleable definition of 'organized crime' itself. One significant component has
been a special focus upon a new 'folk devil' - the money launderer - who
is viewed as a necessary element in the 'system' of international crime, and
who  enables organized criminals to 'penetrate' the respectable economy and

  * Presented to the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology Conference, 29
    January-I February 1996, Wellington, New Zealand and at the Australian Institute of
    Criminology, February 1996, Canberra, Australia. Accepted in revised form: 10 January
    1997.
  t Professor of Criminology and Director, White-Collar and Organized Crime Unit, School of
    Social and Administrative Studies, University of Wales, Cardiff, Cardiff CFI 3AT, Wales,
    UK.


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