INDUSTRY FOCUS
Organised gangs research
New research reveals that organised crime groups (OCGs) are twice as prolific as official figures indicate.
Perpetuity Research and the Police Foundation has been researching the impact of serious organised crime in communities and how this threat is tackled locally in a study supported by the Dawes Trust.
The findings throw into question official figures and suggest that police resources are disproportionately focused upon drug-related organised crime at the expense of other crimes including fraud, human trafficking and child sexual exploitation.
The report, published this month, also reveals other striking findings, namely:
- From a sample of frauds committed in two police force areas, between 31% and 45% of all related offences occurring locally was linked to OCGs. This is at least twice the level of previous Government estimates.
- On average, individual victims of organised fraud lose over £10,000 per fraud offence compared with victims of non-organised frauds, who lose on average £4,000.
- OCGs involved in fraud often operate outside the UK and the response from law enforcement agencies is ineffective.
- In a single city, 65 brothels (linked to 74 offenders) were identified over a two-year period. More than three quarters (77%) displayed links to OCGs
- In 29% of the brothels there was evidence that sex workers’ movements had been controlled
- No single agency took ownership of the problem of exploitation in the off-street sex market and there was very little proactive engagement with vulnerable sex workers
Police proactive work on organised crime focuses heavily on drug dealing and insufficiently on crimes such as fraud, human trafficking and child sexual exploitation
Professor Martin Gill of Perpetuity Research who co-managed the research said:
“The findings are striking. They suggest that organised crime is more prolific than many had estimated and the harm’s more serious than we thought. Yet the policing response often falls between stalls. In our preoccupation with terrorism and cyber-crime, important though they are, we must not lose focus on a range of other offence types.”
