The Department for the Study of the Contemporary Criminal Menace

The Department:

• Strives to increase awareness of contemporary criminal phenomena, national or transnational, that threaten our societies in all their dimensions: legal, criminological, social, cultural, financial…
• After having defined the elements that characterize the threats, aims to make concrete proposals to create or reinforce the legal means available to combat these criminal phenomena.
• Records, analyzes, tracks trends, provides information, warnings and proposals.

The Emerging Contemporary Criminal Menace

• The speed of computer information, worldwide economic exchanges, globalization, and the concurrent weakening of the classic State, are factors that are conductive to the emergence of a form of criminality that defies traditional categorization.

• This criminal activity distinguishes itself not only by its extreme versatility, but also by the speed of its evolution. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet sphere of influence, and the shift from bi-polarization to nationalism, or even clanism, have resulted in the loss of both ideological points of reference and financial sources for a number of violent political movements.

• Naturally these movements have focused on any lucrative activity (based on all forms of trafficking) capable of financing their cause. It is also quite natural that groups aiming exclusively for power and profit should adopt terrorist methods that have proven effective.

• This overlapping of criminal, financial and political factors explains the sophistication as well as the global nature of contemporary criminal threats: their methods are very diverse, and their sphere of action limitless, resorting, when necessary, to pre-existing criminal networks.
• For instance, urban violence, based on cultural differences and social exclusion, can very well serve more vast and coordinated strategies, and consequently requires a special understanding.

• Against this contemporary criminality, which defies traditional categorization, our legal means of classification, detection, pursuit, and repression, created to combat a form of criminality now obsolete, are slow, compartmentalized, and increasingly inappropriate.

 

Methods & actions to counter the Contemporary Criminal Menace

• Contemporary criminal threats demand that our knowledge and proposals now include in their analyses the complexity and immensity of the means available to the enemy, whose power sometimes exceeds the capacity of response of a single State.

• It is therefore necessary to abandon the usual categorization and try rather to develop a more global vision. This is the only way actually to measure the phenomena and develop insightful solutions.

• No doubt significant tools already are available, such as those created by the CERVIP (Center for the Study and Research on Political Violence). However, these tools need to be further developed so that the Rule of Law of modern States can be extended to these often poorly identified criminal threats.

• This is precisely one of the goals of the Department for the Study of the Contemporary Criminal Menace. It will strive to present concrete proposals for action. Suggestions that are at times different and out of the ordinary, and at other times adapted and borrowed from foreign or transnational models. However, in order to achieve this, and in view of the threat, it is imperative to survey the spheres that can be examined for research and analysis.

Action Methods of the Department for the Study of the Contemporary Criminal Menace

It addition to the contribution of academics, it is obviously essential also to solicit input from the Magistrature, Police, Gendarmerie, Army, and generally from all specialists, in France as well as abroad.

For this reason the Department has created a Scientific Council, convening French and foreign specialists, academic as well as practitioners.

The Department for the Study of the Contemporary Criminal Menace is developing publishing and information activities in the pertinent domains.

Fields of investigations for the Department for the Study of the Contemporary Criminal Menace

• Mafia-type criminality: typology of transnational groups with a criminal aim.
• Drug trafficking: production, flows, networks, financial repercussions.
• Money laundering: conversion of funds in view of penetrating and destabilizing the legitimate economy.
• Trafficking in weapons, works of art, medical supplies, organs, human beings (clandestine immigration networks, child prostitution).
• Religious fanaticism and sects: extremist behavior and creation of groups using a specific violence.
• Terrorism: identification and listing of procedures, diversion of political ends.
• Denatured guerillas: politically oriented groups situated or not within low intensity conflicts, using criminal procedures to finance their cause.
• "Urban violence" and "concrete jungles": forbidden perimeters, parallel economies, violent subcultures relying on all forms of trafficking, most notably narcotics, street gangs.
• Eco-terrorism/bio-terrorism: forms of violence based on the defense of a certain vision of the environment, and use of biological agents for hegemonic or simply criminal goals.
• "Open sources": discovery and use of open sources sometimes supplied by those concerned, leading to the uncovering of new threats.
• "Economic intelligence": economic espionage, "competition analysis", competitor intelligence, and adapted counter-intelligence methods.
• "Cyber-crime"/"Infowar": forms of criminality based on the vulnerability generated by computer networks, information highways and adapted responses.

Activities of the Department for the Study of the Contemporary Criminal Menace

The research activity of the CCM includes the publication on its website, of its materials pertaining to the Contemporary Criminal Menace, notably:

- Research work:

• Studies, articles, updates
• Dissertations
• Pertinent documents

• "Notes & Studies of the Institute of Criminology"
• "Terrorism & Political Violence"

• Communication

This communication is done through:

• The "CCM Tuesdays", conferences-debates, by invitation, centering on an expert, 6 times a year
• Seminars bringing together specialists and graduate students
• International Conferences