Does the Aggravated Sentencing Regime under the Prevention of Organised Crime Act 121 of 1998 Violate Freedom of Association? A Constitutional and Comparative Analysis

In terms of section 10(3) of the Prevention of Organised Crime Act 121 of 1998 (“POCA”), a court may impose an aggravated sentence on a criminal offender if the offender was a gang member at the time of the commission of a crime. The court is entitled to apply section 10(3) to the sentencing of any common-law or statutory offence, save for the gang-related offences in Chapter 4 of POCA. As aggravated punishment is attached directly to a person’s status as a gang member, one must question whether such aggravated punishment does not violate the right to freedom of association in section 18 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996. Section 18 is an unqualified right and subject only to the limitations clause under section 36 of the Constitution. The purpose of this contribution is to investigate whether the associational freedom guaranteed by the Constitution may be limited in light of considerations under international law (such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) as well as foreign law (specifically the United States and Germany). The consensus is, broadly speaking, that persons are nondeserving of associational protection where the conduct connected to such an association is criminal in nature. Increased criminal consequences are justifiable where a person’s unlawful conduct is also connected to their status and activity as a member of a criminal organisation. However, increased criminal consequences based merely on a person’s membership of a criminal organisation, as is the case in terms of section 10(3) of POCA, is considered arbitrary and irrational. The conclusion is that section 10(3) of POCA should be amended so that it applies only to crimes that are related to a convicted person’s gang-related activities.

Możliwość zastosowania inżynierii odwrotnej do zwalczania organizacji przestępczych typu sieciowego

Inżynieria odwrotna może byćwykorzystana do odtwarzania lub modyfikacji obiektów fizycznych oraz zastosowana do programów komputerowych. Nowym wyzwaniem jest jej wykorzystanie w celu zwiększenia skuteczności przeciwdziałania i zwalczania przestępczości kryminalnej i terrorystycznej (zwłaszcza przestępczości zorganizowanej). Odwrócenie procesów analitycznych przez analizęobiektową, analizęzarządzania, analizęlogistyczno-finansową, a także wykorzystanie analizy kryminalistycznej i psychocybernetycznej daje możliwośćudoskonalenia instrumentów walki z zorganizowanąformąpopełniania przestępstw. Dzięki uzupełnieniu braków stwierdzonych w analizie i ponownej ocenie obiektu będzie można otrzymaćten sam obiekt, ale we „wzbogaconej” wersji, lub inny obiekt będący „doskonalszym” modelem analizowanego podmiotu. W konsekwencji będzie możliwe skuteczniejsze i efektywniejszej zneutralizowanie organizacji przestępczej działającej w formie zorganizowanej, w obszarze kryminalnym czy terrorystycznym. The possibility of using reverse engineering to combat network – type criminal organisation Reverse engineering for the most part now refers to the restoration or modification of physical objects and computer programmes. A new challenge in the fight against crime is the use of reverse engineering to improve the measures of preventing and combating criminal and terrorist crime. Reversing processes through object-oriented analysis, as well as through management, logistics, financial, forensic and psychocybernetic analyses is a new outlook on improving the instruments to fight organized crime. As a result, by remedying the identified deficiencies and re-assessing the object, one will be able to get the same object but in the “enhanced”version or another object related to the analysed entity. Consequently, it will be possible to neutralize a criminal or terrorist organization more effectively and efficiently.

Killing methods in Sicilian Mafia families

The Sicilian Mafia is a criminal organisation founded in Sicily which is an island south of the Italian mainland in the Mediterranean Sea. Until recently, this organization was responsible for many murders and bombings. However, recently, based on the investigations known as the “Mare Nostrum” operation, the Supreme Court convicted 67 people and sent them to prison. Some defendants were found guilty of as many as 39 murders. This article reviews the forensic analysis that was used when investigating responsibility for these Mafia murders. Our review is based on the court documents and the ballistic investigations which were carried out to evaluate the reliability of “repented” or “pentiti” statements. The murder victims were almost all men but one was a woman all of whom had gunshot lesions; in many cases, the fatal injuries were to the head and face. Ballistic analysis showed that in more than half of these murders, more than one weapon was used. In conclusion, the forensic analysis of the murders shows the Sicilian inter-families’ dynamics and their characteristic operating methods.

Italian-American conversations on the mafia: Danilo Dolci visits Philadelphia’s 1961 Festival of Italy

In 1961 the peace activist and anti-mafia campaigner Danilo Dolci spoke at a protest event at the Italian centennial of unification celebrations hosted by the City of Philadelphia. The reactions to the talk he gave on development initiatives in Western Sicily provide some insight into the transnational discussion that was developing around the mafia, governance and leadership in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Dolci and his supporters made the suggestion that the problems encountered by the post-war governments in Italy, Sicily and Philadelphia were a result of leaderships which presented or made the appearance of change but did not fix the underlying problems. This article maps how the conversation developed, why the idea of the mafia as a ‘thing’, an operating criminal organisation with Sicilian origins, was such an important narrative, and what it meant for those trying to make a claim to leadership positions.

‘Blood in Reasoning’: State Violence, Contested Territories and Black Criminal Agency in Urban Brazil

This article examines black criminal agency in the context of drug trafficking and territorial control by the Primeiro Comando da Capital (First Capital Command, PCC), a self-identified criminal organisation in São Paulo's favelas. It argues that black youth's racialised encounters with the police shape their political praxis in the city. Since in the racial imaginary, they are constantly linked to crime and violence, and since their criminalised status justifies mass incarceration and death by the police, criminality appears as a valid category to better understand not only their fate but also their agency. Ethnographic fieldwork carried out in 2009 and 2010 in a hyper-impoverished, predominately black slum community, along with weekly visits to a local detention centre in São Paulo, informs the author's analysis of the PCC's controversial languages of resistance and the gendered and racialised outcomes that emerge from their attempts to fend off the state in such topographies of domination.