Criminological and Forensic Aspects of Selected Areas of Organized Crime in Poland

<p><span lang="EN-US">The article presents a criminological and forensic analysis of selected forms of contemporary organized crime in Poland, with particular emphasis on criminal terror, human trafficking, car crime, money laundering and cross-border crime. The study indicates the most important methods used by offenders in the analyzed areas from the perspective of criminology and forensics. The article aims at presenting the phenomenology (also known as symptomatology) of organized crime, including the dynamics and structure of crime in general, the methods of committing particular crimes and some elements of how the criminal world is organized. The author also points to the etiology of the characterized criminal activities. Among others, the reports on the activities of the Central Police Investigation Bureau have been used during the research. As a result of the analysis, several remarks have been formulated. First of all, the character of the presented forms of organized crime in Poland changes with time. Secondly, groups that demonstrate strictly criminal activities are still present in the public space. Thirdly, crime becomes more interdisciplinary and the criminal groups enter new areas of criminal activities. The article may form a contribution to further research in this area, including especially the development of effective mechanisms for the prevention of organized crime.</span></p>

THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF CAR CRIME AND CURRENT CHANGES IN ITS PROFILE

The article presents the evolution of car crime. It discusses the causes and conditions of vehicle theft. It also presents an aspect of the professionalisation of criminals, which was infl uenced by the emergence of modern anti-theft systems. It has also resulted in the creation of groups, among which individuals are engaged in a specifi c task involving planning, taking the vehicle, and then its legalisation and sale. The paper also discusses the issues of counteracting car crime, including the importance of international cooperation of police services and cooperation of vehicle manufacturers, which helps to prevent such criminal acts.

Car Crimes and the Cultural Imagination

The car and crime become entrenched in the cultural imagination with the widely circulated images of the bullet-hole-ravaged Ford V8 that Bonnie (Parker) and Clyde (Barrow) were in when they were killed by Texan and Louisianan police in 1934. This couple of outlaws (and their gang) had kept newspaper readers enthralled and appalled as they robbed, murdered, and kidnapped throughout the Midwest since 1932. The scope of their activities and their success in evading authorities, along with their crimes, which included many vehicle thefts, were facilitated by the mobility of the car. Before Bonnie and Clyde, car crime in the public consciousness comprised images of the foolish and antisocial behavior of the well-to-do car-owning elite. After Bonnie and Clyde, the famous image of their death car and the celebrity-making image of Bonnie as the archetypical gangster moll with cigar and revolver leaning over a stolen car, linked in the cultural imagination crime and cars as everyday through a visceral mix of bodies, sex, and violence. In particular, the visceral imaginings of car crime after Bonnie and Clyde separated into four locations. All involved, to certain degree, bodies, sex, and violence, but distinct contexts and meanings can be identified. The first location is the imaging of car crime itself; of risky use of the car—speeding, dangerous driving, racing, drink driving—actions evidenced by carnage on the roads. There have emerged two frames for this location. The first is the serious and deadly context of the usually male driver fueled by “combustion masculinity” taking irresponsible risks with bloody consequences. The second is the humorous, over-the-top risky, subversive, and illegal car-based activities, a frame tapped into by television shows like Top Gear (Klein, 2002–2015) and Bush Mechanics (Batty, 2001) and manifest in the car chase trope. The second location is the car as a crime scene. From JFK’s assassination in a Lincoln convertible, to the car as site of sexual assault, to the illicit imaginings of the goings-on in a VW microbus, the car is a place in which crimes happen. The car is seen as constructing an internal geography in which crimes occur. The third location has the car as a facilitator of criminal activity. In the road buddy narrative from On the Road (Kerouac, 1957) to Thelma & Louise (Scott, 1991) the car becomes the outlaw’s mechanical horse facilitating a crime spree and evading arrest. At the fourth location, the car became imaged as property, the car as a crime object. From Gone in 60 Seconds (Sena, 2000) to the advertisements of the vehicle insurance industry, the car became conceived as vulnerable property, the target of theft. While distinguishable, each location is not segmented in the cultural imagination, but, as role-played by gamers in the Grand Theft Auto computer game series, cross and coexist. Now well into its second century, the car, notwithstanding contemporary transformations, nurtures a vivid imagining of its culture gone wrong.

The Assault Awareness Course and New Drivers’ Initiative; Groupwork programmes for young people convicted of violent and vehicle offences

<p><i>At the point that someone commits a crime and causes deliberate harm to others, that person must by definition have behaved irresponsibly and shown little or no empathy for their victims. Following the offence they may continue to avoid taking responsibility, hiding behind excuses to minimise their culpability and shift the blame on others – in order to avoid unpleasant consequences for themselves. Many will not consider the suffering to which their behaviour has led. Offending behaviour and restorative justice interventions will succeed only to the extent that a perpetrator is willing to accept responsibility for their part in their crime and shows some empathy for those they harmed. Oxfordshire Youth Offending Service has developed two innovative groupwork programmes, one for young people who have committed violent offences and the other for car crime. These programmes are designed to challenge participants to be accountable and provide conditions for an empathic response towards their victims.</i></p>