There ain't no black in the Union Jack

Age and Crime.

Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism, Vadim Volkov. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2002. 224 pp. $42.95 hardcover.Russian organized crime has undergone enormous changes since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The trends and patterns that characterize its modus operandi have been in constant flux, under pressure from both external and internal forces. In lurid headlines and seats of power it has been hyped, vilified, and glamorizedbut rarely studied as an academic subject. Unfortunately, the lack of serious literature has somewhat obscured its true colors. Its secretive and amorphous nature makes it difficult to investigate, especially for outside observers. Its combination of death and honor lends itself easily to yellow journalism. Its connections to former KGB agents smacks of global conspiracies and stirs the remnants of cold war mentality.In Violent Entrepreneurs, Volkov attempts to correct the many myths and misperceptions about Russian organized crime by foregoing the sensational and simplistic language of murder and greed and treating the subject as an economic agent responding to forces of supply and demand. His book, although not without flaws, is a welcome addition to a small but growing library of academic literature that examines organized crime as a real nonstate actor, on par with international blocs, NGOs, and corporations.The thrust of Volkov's argument is that in the early 1990s, criminal groups helped to sustain Russia's fledgling private economy by providing something that the government could not-property rights and contract enforcement. This argument has been developed by Diego Gambetta and, notably, by Federico Varese (who plays a conspicuously small role in Volkov's explanations), and it runs as follows: although the post-Soviet government instituted the freedom to own private property, it did not provide the mechanisms needed to protect it-that is, a viable set of laws, an independent judiciary, and an impartial enforcement apparatus in the form of police. Thus, in the early 1990s, Russian businesses were operating in a state approximating anarcho-capitalism-Hobbes' state of nature revived in the twentieth century. Not surprisingly, organized crime groups stepped in to fill the vacuum left by the state, providing property protection and contract enforcement to fledgling post-Soviet markets. The paradoxical corollary is that organized crime may actually have helped to create and sustain those private markets, albeit at a high cost to the owners.The important conclusions to draw from Volkov's book is that, first, organized crime has primarily acted as an economic agent and, second, since 1995 organized crime has lost its monopoly on providing protection services. Organized crime has become only one of several types of violence-managing agencies (VMAs), as Volkov calls them. That is hardly news for the average Russian businessman. In my conversations with owners of small and middle-level businesses around Moscow and St. Petersburg at the end of 2001, there was universal consensus that an enterprise can operate without being extorted by a criminal group. What is required, however, is the presence of some sort of violence-managing agent, which Volkov classifies into four types: criminal groups, private security services, private protection companies, and informal protective agencies associated with the state. As a result, crime groups must now compete not only among themselves but also against the other VMAs. The state, meanwhile, has also been slowly reasserting its control over enforcement and property protection. Moreover, the largest organized crime groups have slowly been shifting into legitimate spheres, where the risks are smaller and the profit potentials are greater, given the right connections. As a result, the influence of "pure" organized crime has greatly diminished since the early 1990s.Many observers, however, are still captivated by the staggering statistics from that period, which proclaimed that the Russian mafiya (a problematic term for a phenomenon neither fully Russian nor fully mafia-like) controlled 80-some percent of Russian businesses. …

Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism

Street Gang Patterns and Policies

In the gang

This article introduces the concept of ‘gang glocalization’ to capture the processes by which global media myths and conventions create and shape local gang realities. The different stages of gang glocalization, and the motives to engage in this process, are examined by comparison of two empirical cases – Congolese gangs in Brussels and Afro-Caribbean gangs in London. This multi-sited ethnography finds that youth use fiction and imagination in order to create individual and collective gang identities. Police and political action against gangs is then informed by the same fiction and imagination, resulting in new gang realities based not on what is real. We find that mythmaking is an essential aspect of gangs – without the myth there is no gang – and that imagination is at the core of some of its most harmful activities, namely spectacular symbolic violence. This is an update on Thrasher’s (1927) old themes. The driving forces behind gang glocalization are emotions and desires tied to lived experiences of ...

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Gang glocalization: How the global mediascape creates and shapes local gang realities:

Using the Brussels black African gangs as an example, this article aims to prove that gang members nowadays take advantage of the new possibilities offered by technological innovation, such as the internet and more specifically weblogs, to communicate ‘gang-ness’. In recent years, Brussels, the Belgian capital, has witnessed the rise of several troublesome youth gangs, among which black African youth gangs have attracted most attention. Made up of migrants predominantly coming from the African Great Lakes Region, the Belgian police estimate that at least 13 black African gangs are active in Brussels, each with approximately 20–50 members. Their gang labels allude to skin colour, such as ‘Black Demolition’, to the neighbourhood surrounding the subway station of the same name, such as ‘Anneessens’ or to postal codes of Brussels municipalities such as ‘1140’, ‘1070 style’, ‘1050 Staff’. Although members are held responsible for extortion, drug trafficking and violent robberies, the foremost distinctive feature of black African gangs is their involvement in public black-on-black fights involving excessive violence, stabbings and occasionally homicides. In 2009 five gang-motivated homicides were recorded in Brussels – a figure that by Belgian standards is exceptionally high. European Journal of Crime, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice 20 (2012) 165–180

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Gangland Online: Performing the Real Imaginary World of Gangstas and Ghettos in Brussels

Information technology offers unprecedented opportunities to individuals, businesses and the public sector but also creates new vulnerabilities to crime. Impressive cybercrimes have been reported in the media in recent years, demonstrating the grave harm that even a single cyberattack can cause. Yet no systematic assessment of the impact of cybercrime on Belgian society and economy had been conducted until the start of the research project Belgian Cost of Cybercrime (BCC) in 2013, which was funded by the Belgian Service Science Policy Office (BELSPO) and coordinated by the KU Leuven Centre for IT & IP Law (CiTiP), in collaboration with the KU Leuven Institute of Criminology (LINC).Building on that large multidisciplinary project, the book assesses the impact of cybercrime on businesses based in Belgium, drawing from a thorough conceptualization of both cybercrime and its impact. Using data collected through two surveys sent to more than 9,000 representatives of Belgian businesses, the authors report that most of the responding businesses are confronted with at least one type of cybercrime every year and some of them suffer serious harm from these incidents. Lastly, the book calls for the identification and implementation of effective preventive measures targeting the different types of cybercrime.

The Impact of Cybercrime on Belgian Businesses

The Gang Game : The Myth and Seduction of Gangs

This chapter provides readers with an insight into gang-related violence, and responses to gang-related violence, across a number of major European cities. To this end, it brings together city-specific sections written by subject experts who have resided and conducted research in four European countries: the UK, Belgium, Russia and Sweden. Each section of the chapter follows a similar structure: first, we provide contextual information about gangs in each city; second, we discuss data on gang member demographics; third, we consider the nature and scale of gang-related urban violence; and fourth, we outline some of the main policy responses, including public health approaches, intended to reduce gang violence. By providing an in-depth examination of the selected cities, the chapter provides some indication of the diversity of gangs and gang-related violence across Europe, while also indicating important areas of convergence. In addition, it performs the useful function of flagging areas where evidence is currently lacking and in need of better data-recording practices and further research.

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Elke Van Hellemont

Papers

Gang glocalization: How the global mediascape creates and shapes local gang realities:

Gangland Online: Performing the Real Imaginary World of Gangstas and Ghettos in Brussels

The Impact of Cybercrime on Belgian Businesses

The Gang Game : The Myth and Seduction of Gangs

European Street Gangs and Urban Violence