"The Champions League of Perpetrators?": An Analysis of the Construction of Organized Crime in Germany

• In Event: Policing and Prosecuting Organized Crime

Abstract

Organized Crime is deemed to be one of the major crime phenomena with a substantive threat to the economy, the integrity of democratic structures and society as a whole. Even in the face of definitional ambiguity, the term “organized crime” is regularly thrown around in public and political discourse. While it is widely accepted that organized crime – in one form or other – exists, the processes behind investigations and the influence of the work of law enforcement agencies on the construction of the phenomenon “organized crime” are often overlooked. Rooted in a social constructionist framework, my dissertation therefore examines how the phenomenon of organized crime is being constructed through the work of German law enforcement agencies. Drawing on data generated within the Germany-wide research project “Organized Crime 3.0” and based on a thorough grounded theory analysis of 40+ qualitative in-depth interviews as well as case files, I find that – among others – ethnicity and the attested degree of professionalism are central elements in the construction of organized crime in Germany. In the presentation I will highlight key empirical findings on the construction of organized crime in Germany as a social problem.

Author

• Sarah Schreier, Institute of Criminology, University of Tuebingen (Germany)