Scientific approach to the OCTA report from an analytical, operational point of view

Abstract

The author gives an introduction to the Europol ‘Organised Crime Threat Assessment’ (OCTA), a continuous report about the development of organised crime in the EU, produced from 2006 to 2011. This article gives information about the history of OCTA, the sources of the data collection and the environment of intelligence-led policing.
The author reports that criminal markets and regions are focused on by OCTA. Operating groups, their typology and their possible clusters are part of the OCTA report.
By combining different factors, such as destination markets, criminal group types, migration processes and others, OCTA identifies five ‘criminal hubs’ in the EU: North-West, North-East, South-West, South and South-East. Each of them is related to specific criminal flows from other parts of the world, from South America, Asia and Russia. Trends in 2008 showed that organised crime groups were ‘transnational, multi-ethnic and poly-crime’ and ‘increasing their influence in the economic, social and politic environments’. The author ends by drawing a picture of organised crime that confirms existing studies of the phenomena and ask for further research strategies.