Organised Crime and the Law A Comparative Analysis

"Organised Crime and the Law" presents an overview of the laws and policies adopted to address the phenomenon of organised crime in the United Kingdom and Ireland, assessing the degree to which these justice systems have been recalibrated, in terms of the prevention, investigation, prosecution and punishment of organised criminality. While the notion of organised crime itself is a contested one, States' legal responses treat it and its constituent offences as unproblematic in a definitional sense. This book advances a systematic doctrinal critique of domestic criminal laws, laws of evidence, and civil processes.

"Organised Crime and the Law" constructs a theoretical framework on which an appraisal of these legal measures may be based, focusing in particular on the tension between due process and crime control, the demands of public protection and risk aversion, and other adaptations. In particular, it identifies parallels and points of divergence between the different jurisdictions in the UK and Ireland, bearing in mind the shared history of subversive threats and counter-terrorism policies. It further examines the extent to which policy transfer is evident in the UK and Ireland in terms of emulating the US in the reactions to organised crime.