NCJ Number
230285
Journal
Criminal Justice Studies Volume: 23 Issue: 1 Dated: March 2010 Pages: 21-31
Date Published
March 2010
Length
11 pages
Annotation
This paper introduces a contingent approach to policing organized crime.
Abstract
This paper suggests that policing organized crime requires a contingent approach. The relative knowledge between police organizations and criminal organizations determines the optimal policing approach. Both police organizations and criminal organizations are defined as knowledge organizations, where the knowledge levels are core knowledge, advanced knowledge, and innovative knowledge in terms of know-what, know-how, and know-why. This study found that based on the relative knowledge of criminals vs. police, four sectors emerge: random policing, disadvantaged policing, targeted policing, and competitive policing. From a theoretical point of view, further research is needed when both constructs and continuous scales are applied in the classification into contingent situations. The contingent approach to policing organized crime is recommended for police practice. This paper presents explicit representation of the knowledge war in terms of knowledge competition between police organizations and criminal organizations. Figure and references (Published Abstract)