How Organised is Organised Crime in France?

Abstract

In France, as in other European countries, organised crime is a relatively recent concept, though it is now referred to with increasing regularity. The expression ‘organised crime’ made its appearance in the French public debate in the early 1990s, in parallel with the end of the Cold War and the bipolar world view that this had engendered. Two assessments are implicitly associated with the concept of organised crime: that the existing law enforcement arrangements are inadequate to deal with this new form of criminality and that the process of globalisation created opportunities for the growth of organised crime. In other words, it is assumed that the upheavals in the various economies all around the world allowed criminal organisations to emerge or transform themselves.