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The myth of success: the emergence and maintenance of a specialized gang unit in Stockholm, Sweden
Stockholms universitet.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-0973-3481
Michigan State University.
Linköping University.
2015 (English)In: International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, ISSN 0192-4036, E-ISSN 2157-6475, Vol. 39, no 3, p. 199-217Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Street gangs and organized crime groups pose a unique challenge to police departments across the globe. Given their penchant for public displays of affiliation through well-recognized signs and symbols, their presence is often associated with media attention and public scrutiny, which threatens the legitimacy of the police and creates added pressure to generate a specific and public response to the threat these groups pose. The current study documents how the Stockholm County, Sweden, police developed and maintained an anti-gang operation in response to an emerging gang problem. While police officials labeled the anti-gang initiative a success in the news media, analyses of prosecution statistics and internal police documents demonstrate a less than ideal effect of this operation. Potential reasons for the discrepancy in public pronouncements of programmatic success relative to evaluation of official data are discussed.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Taylor & Francis , 2015. Vol. 39, no 3, p. 199-217
Keywords [en]
gangs, policing, evaluation, media, police legitimacy, police cynicism
National Category
Sociology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-35568DOI: 10.1080/01924036.2014.973054OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hig-35568DiVA, id: diva2:1542887
Available from: 2021-04-09 Created: 2021-04-09 Last updated: 2021-04-09Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Criminal Organizing: Studies in the sociology of organized crime
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Criminal Organizing: Studies in the sociology of organized crime
2016 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

What organized crime is and how it can be prevented are two of the key questions in both organized crime research and criminal policy. However, despite many attempts, organized crime research, the criminal justice system and criminal policy have failed to provide a shared and recognized conceptual definition of organized crime, which has opened the door to political interpretations. Organized crime is presented as an objective reality—mostly based on anecdotal empirical evidence and generic descriptions—and has been understood, as being intrinsically different from social organization, and this has been a justification for treating organized crime conceptually separately.

In this dissertation, the concept of organized crime is deconstructed and analyzed. Based on five studies and an introductory chapter, I argue that organized crime is an overarching concept based on an abstraction of different underlying concepts, such as gang, mafia, and network, which are in turn semi-overarching and overlapping abstractions of different crime phenomena, such as syndicates, street-gangs, and drug networks. This combination of a generic concept based on underlying concepts, which are themselves subject to similar conceptual difficulties, has given rise to a conceptual confusion surrounding the term and the concept of organized crime. The consequences of this conceptual confusion are not only an issue of semantics, but have implications for our understanding of the nature of criminal collaboration as well as both legal and policy consequences. By combining different observers, methods and empirical materials relating to dimensions of criminal collaboration, I illustrate the strong analogies that exist between forms of criminal collaboration and the theory of social organization.

I argue in this dissertation that criminal organizing is not intrinsically different from social organizing. In fact, the dissertation illustrates the existence of strong analogies between patterns of criminal organizing and the elements of social organizations. But depending on time and context, some actions and forms of organizing are defined as criminal, and are then, intentionally or unintentionally, presumed to be intrinsically different from social organizing. Since the basis of my argument is that criminal organizing is not intrinsically different from social organizing, I advocate that the study of organized crime needs to return to the basic principles of social organization in order to understand the emergence of, and the underlying mechanism that gives rise to, the forms of criminal collaboration that we seek to explain. To this end, a new general analytical framework, “criminal organizing”, that brings the different forms of criminal organizations and their dimensions together under a single analytical tool, is proposed as an example of how organizational sociology can advance organized crime research and clarify the chaotic concept of organized crime. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Stockholm: Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, 2016. p. 103
Keywords
Organized crime, Criminal organizing, Social order, Mafia, Gang, Network
National Category
Sociology
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-35562 (URN)978-91-7649-364-9 (ISBN)
Public defence
2016-06-03, Hörsal 4, Hus B, Universitetsvägen 10 B, 10:00 (Swedish)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2021-04-09 Created: 2021-04-09 Last updated: 2021-04-09Bibliographically approved

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Rostami, Amir

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