Best Practices to Combat Organized Crime Research Workshop

Issue

The fight against organized crime in Canada continues to be a popular topic of discussion amongst academics, law enforcement agencies, politicians, and the Canadian populace as a whole. Of particular concern is what constitutes the best practices to effectively combat against the crime perpetrated by criminal organizations residing in Canada and abroad. As a result, in November of 2009, experts in the field of organized crime gathered at a summit entitled, The Best Practices to Combat Organized Crime Research Workshop in Ottawa, Ontario to discuss innovative ideas and effective strategies to aid in the effort to eradicate the presence of organized crime in Canada.

Background

Organized crime takes many forms, from low-level street violence committed on city streets to white collar crime and fraud perpetrated in corporate settings. It is not surprising then, that one of the key problems pertaining to organized criminal activity in Canada is the convoluted legal definition of organized crime. Indeed, there remains little to no consensus as to what organized crime and criminal organizations should be defined as, how the presence of said crime should be measured, and what types of policies and strategies should be implemented to remove this problem from the Canadian criminal justice landscape.

The purpose of the Best Practices to Combat Organized Crime Research Workshop was to discuss new and innovative ideas and research methods that could help to alleviate this, and other problems relating to the various forms of organized crime occurring in Canada. Indeed, leaving the problem of organized crime unaddressed would only serve to exacerbate the level of organized criminal activity occurring in Canada and allow violent and...

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...uman trafficking, money laundering, and white collar crime conducted by criminal organizations in Canada?

To conclude, at the Best Practices to Combat Organized Crime Research Workshop, policy makers, government researchers, and practitioners met with academic organized crime experts to explore innovative strategies to eradicate organized crime in Canada. It was hoped that if the aforementioned best practices were operationalized into government policy, a paradigm shift could occur successfully moving from the current traditional reactive and suppressive law enforcement model of fighting criminal organizations, towards a more preventative and behaviour oriented approach. However, almost five years later, the success and long-term policy ramifications stemming from the research workshop remain to be seen as Canada continues its ongoing fight against organized crime.