The hierarchy of seriousness of organised crime in Romania: a law-enforcement perspective

• In Event: International perspectives on organized crime

Abstract

First being introduced during the 1990s transition period following the fall of the communist regime, the concept of organised crime (OC) is a recent import into the Romanian legal and law-enforcement lexicon. The socio-legal conceptualisation of OC in Romania has been heavily influenced by the American and Western-European discourse, as indicated by the language used in the legislation, as well as the structuring of the law-enforcement agencies created to tackle the newly identified threat. This paper is based on data collected through qualitative interviews with anti-OC prosecutors, law-enforcement officers, and other criminal justice experts in Romania in 2019. It questions the accuracy and usefulness of the term ‘organised crime’ to describe some of the criminal phenomena associated with this concept in the Romanian context. The findings indicate that due to an artificial importation of the concept, the resulting social construction differs between various institutions in the Romanian criminal justice system, leading to uneven legal practice. Furthermore, the process of OC policy transfer in the case of Romania focused anti-OC policing efforts on certain crime types, more commonly associated with the phenomenon in the West, such as drug trafficking. This is to the detriment of other crimes which are of great significance locally, such as illegal logging, creating what the author describes as ‘the hierarchy of seriousness of OC’. The paper ultimately argues that while the legal conceptual boundaries of OC in Romania are ever-expanding (law in books), the same old, American-inspired, stereotypical conceptualisation of OC continues to dominate policing and criminal justice practice (law in action).

Author

• Alexandra Neag, Anglia Ruskin University