Organized cybercrime: to be or not to be? Definitions of organized crime on the test bench of the digital society

• In Event: Cybercrime Working Group - Trends in cybercrime 1

Abstract

Many researchers applying scholarly definitions of organized crime to cybercriminal groups have concluded that these groups are not “organized criminal groups”. In doing so, these authors have adopted a mafia-centric operational definition that follows criminological literature which states that for organized crime to exist, elements such as the use of violence, corruption, and the ability to infiltrate the economy must be present in addition to criminal association, the commission of serious crimes, duration and stability over time.
However, one could argue that if our way of defining organized crime, which we use as a benchmark, and the characteristics we look for were different, we could probably find them in cybercrime groups. For example, if we use paradigms from the criminological literature that define organized crime using the concepts of “enterprise”, “network”, “governance” and "criminal organizing”, we might arrive at different answers. At the same time, however, it is also possible – as recently pointed out by other authors – that more 'classical' definitions of organized crime, when reconsidered in light of the numerous and pervasive changes of digital societies, are also easily applicable to these groups.
To build on this academic debate, in the research presented here, the authors have put the definitions of organized crime to the test of the digital society: the constituent elements of key definitions of organized crime from the criminological literature are identified and operationalized, and their presence or absence is examined in a number of relevant cases committed by cybercrime groups.

Authors

• Andrea Di Nicola, ​Associate professor of criminology, Faculty of Law​, University of Trento​, and director of the​ ​Centre of Security and Crime Sciences​ (University of Trento and University of Verona​)​

• Gabriele Baratto, Faculty of Law, University of Trento | Centre of Security and Crime Sciences, University of Trento and University of Verona