Vertical Markets

RUSI on crime finances

by Mark Rowe

Talk is cheap and action is needed on tackling organised crime’s finances, writes Helena Wood of the Whitehall-based defence and security think-tank, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

The UK Government’s 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) recognised serious and organised crime as a Tier-2 national security threat and stated that tackling the most harmful groups was a priority.

The SDSR represented, for those at the forefront of tackling the problem, timely recognition that ‘organised crime activity poses a significant and persistent threat to the UK public and economy’ and one which, according to a 2013 Home Office estimate, costs the UK an estimated £24 billion per annum.

The hope proffered by linking the organised crime threat (and the 50,000 individuals assessed to be linked to organised crime groups in the UK) to the wider national security architecture was that this would finally provoke some ‘big thinking’ in government circles about the priority given to this threat.

Law enforcement agencies hoped that the government would consider relative resourcing levels between this and other strategic security threats and hold others to account about how the resources of the wider defence and security architecture could be brought to bear against what was previously viewed solely as a law enforcement responsibility.

Fighting serious and organised crime was long viewed as the ‘poor cousin’ of counter-terrorism policing. However, many of those charged with tackling these crimes had repeatedly argued that, while the impact of terrorist incidents was undoubtedly catastrophic, in pure numerical terms more people in the UK were directly affected by organised crime than by terrorism, whether through drug-fuelled street crime, organised acquisitive crime (such as car thefts) or cyber-enabled mass fraud. RUSI’s Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies will be researching how the law enforcement landscape is evolving to meet this challenge.

For the viewpoint in full visit the RUSI website.

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