Organised crime is big business and most of it is about making profit. The amount of criminal profit being made is eyewatering. That’s not just from financial crime, but all crime. Think about how much money is being made from crime compared to how much money is going into funding policing and partners to try and tackle it.
To help tackle organised crime, EMPAC’s Dr John Coxhead teamed up with Dr Chris Allen (London Policing College) and Dr Michael Harrison (Fintech Research Centre, UEL), to co-present at the NPCC ‘Serious and Complex’ conference on organised crime, hosted by the Institute of Policing at Staffordshire University on 12th July, 2024.
Dr Allen is an expert on business operating models and Dr Harrison an expert on international banking and crypto. Dr Coxhead is a specialist criminological ethnographer, a research approach which is all about understanding how criminals think, based on their underyling motivations, which in turn, drives their tactics.
The conference, attended by ROCUs and the NCA, had its keynote address from Chief Constable Chris Haward, NPCC national strategic lead for serious organised crime. The Home Office presented the latest on Clear, Hold, Build and then came a presentation about OCBs not OCGs.
OCBs not OCGs stands for Organised Crime Businesses, not Organised Crime Gangs. The rationale being policing and partners need to think about organised crime as a business in order to thwart it, as arresting local foot soldiers is like clipping weeds. OCBs means thinking about criminal enterprise as an organic verb, not as a static noun comprising a few visible nominals to play Whac-A-Mole with.
Global and local
The approach also embraces the need to think both globally and locally, simultaneously, as organised crime has a local shopfront (sometimes literally), but an international corporate franchising network pulling the strings. Thinking OCB not OCG is research-informed as globally, we can clearly see trying to arrest organised crime locally, as a sole tactic, is, overall, ineffective. Local containment can be possible, but without addressing the driving infrastructure, just like weeds, the crime comes back, and often in a stronger, more adapted, format.
Research (Springer, 2025) is being published by Dr Coxhead and Dr Robert Smith explaining the necessity for policing and partners to adopt more of a business mind because of the entrepreneurial nature of organised crime. Progress in proactively attacking OCBs does not necessitate only criminal justice outcomes, as removing criminal profit capabilities is more likely to undermine organised crime than prison sentences for any arrested nominals. Thinking OCBs therefore requires a dynamic mindset shift for traditional policing. It also requires fresh skills, transferable from outside industries and informed by research skills, to know where to throw which spanner in which bit of the works.
Forget Cuckooing, think Magpies
Alternative ways of attacking and dismantling business infrastructure and criminal profit can also be quicker and cheaper than lengthy formal investigations. It’s all about adopting tactics of business and hostile takeovers.
Cuckooing, referring to how narcotics foot soldiers might embed themselves in a vulnerable person’s home to operate in disguise, is one thing, but the recommended new police tactic of attacking the (criminal) nest and destroying the underlying infrastructure is more dynamic, and far more dangerous to criminals than traditional policing methods of investigation for prosecution or outdated disruption activities.
But to Magpie, you need to understand the (criminal) nest; its rhythms, seasons, and supply chains. Once so armed, using OCB not OCG tactics can stop a criminal network dead.
Think Organised Crime Business
The change of language (OCB not OCG) is also a change of mindset. It is more proactive, more attacking, and takes the initiative away from seeking to defend against criminal networks making the first move. Too much policing and analytical capacity has become reactive to slow and bureaucratic investigative burdens, keeping it one step behind criminal entrepreneurs. Thinking OCBs is not so much playing the game better: it changes it in the police’s favour. Now, criminals will lie awake wondering what the police are up to, rather than the other way around.
The researchers are actively canvassing politicians to make changes to existing legislation and policy parameters to make asset confiscation more fluid and dynamic, linked to any unexplained wealth, without any need for a predicate offence prosecution.
It is also suggested that all assets seized are reinvested in policing and partnership activity, to bolster funding for enforcement, policing infrastructure, tax evasion and financial investigators, proactive researchers and reconnaissance field agents, given the looming public service funding crises in the UK. After all, estimated criminal markets have skyrocketed in the last few years whilst policing budgets have been shrinking. Does that all make business sense to you?
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