Understanding Organised Crime
- ISBN-10
- 1500983705
- ISBN-13
- 9781500983703
- Pages
- 400
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2014-08-29
- Author
- Seswantsho Godfrey Lebeya
Description
Organised crime is a highly abused term. It is described as a chameleonic kind of crime that epitomises and adapts to the criminal environment of each country. Furthermore, it flourishes where corruption is tolerated. In order to discourage corruption, leaders such as Presidents Mandela, Mbeki, Motlanthe, Zuma and Patil as well as clergymen such as Bishops Tutu, Ndungane, Makgoba and Lekganyane have publicly condemned this enabling crime.Many a crime that appear to be unacceptable are condemned by tagging them with the label 'organised crime'. Such obsession of labelling every serious crime as organised crime is unhelpful when the public prosecutors are unable to draft a charge sheet for violations of organised crime law for want of legal requirements. In this book, the history, theories, definitions, laws such as the RICO, POCA and EOCCA, how organised crime is manifested, and the responses from the Republic of Italy, the Democratic Republic of Tanzania, the United States of America and the Republic of South Africa have been assessed and analysed. Italy has been chosen because of the origin of mafia, a well-known organised criminal group while the United States of America was chosen for its efforts in responding to the phenomenon. Tanzania is chosen as the only country in the region that has legislatively defined organised crime while South Africa is the main focal country whose system the book intends to positively influence.While definitional debates on organised crime are known to be tedious, they remain critical in order to have a common definitional understanding of the phenomenon. The existence of the plethora of definitions of organised crime illustrates the current distorted understanding of the phenomenon - which ultimately renders the task of policing it a nearly impossible mission. Although organised crime remains undefined in laws of the Republic of South Africa and United States of America, lessons can be learnt from Tanzania and Italy. South African law makers pronounced a need to define the term organised crime more specifically but it has since abandoned that stand which places it in the same category as the United States of America whose last 10-year old definition was repealed in 1979. Organised crime is an intangible crime that is not easily identifiable. It is a crime that facades between serial incidents and groups of criminals. To be able to identify organised crime, a definition needs to be designed and applied. Regrettably, the United Nations has, in its search for a definition, failed to define the phenomenon. It managed to define organised criminal group, which left many experts confused with a belief that organised crime has been defined. In an attempt to contribute to the understanding and application, the book advance a proposed definition for South Africa. A process that can be used to identify the phenomenon at various levels in any country is also tabled for possible adaptation and application. The conclusion is that there is a need to find a definition of what we mean by organised crime.
