This article reviews evidence from past research that addresses diverse themes and theories regarding shifts and patterns in the mobility of criminal groups. Our main objective is to identify push and pull factors that will help us understand how and why criminal groups, organisations or general organised crime patterns are present across a variety of settings (i.e. geographical locations, criminal markets and legitimate industries). Push factors refer to forces which drive criminal groups from a setting. Pull factors refer to forces which draw criminal groups to a setting. A distinction is also made between contexts in which offenders organise around available opportunities (the strategic context) and contexts in which opportunities induce greater organisational levels amongst offenders (the emergent context). The most general statement that can be formulated from the present exercise is that opportunities matter more than the group itself. What we demonstrate is that the problems concerning geographical...

The Mobility of Criminal Groups

The production of a new threat is one of the fundamental principles guiding the new European security agenda. The menaces of the Cold War seem to haunt Europe, this time in the form of so-called ‘organised crime’ seen to be proliferating mainly from the countries of the former Eastern bloc. As a new external enemy, Eastern European crime — especially the ‘Russian Mafia’ — serves to create a common identity and gives rise to calls for centralised police bodies (Boer 1997).1

The Inflation of Crime in Russia: Paradoxes of a Threat Around the Baltic Sea

Since the mid-1990s I have been engaged in research on organised crime in Estonia and particularly in Russia from the Finnish point of view. The focus has been on the perceptions of threat, on actual crimes, but also on unrealistic fears of crime. The research material consists of roughly a hundred thematic interviews with police officers in Russia, Estonia and Finland. I have asked them the same question: how much of crime perception is exaggerated, and how much evidence can we find about the proliferation of dangerous, organised crime? What is the real threat? In addition I have closely acquainted myself with the discussions in the media and debates among scholars and experts.

Ando Leps

Papers

Organized crime in Estonia