Organised Crime is a National Security Issue

upstream, overseas, online …

We devote significant resources to countering terrorism. It falls within the remit of our national security organisations who use their most sophisticated capabilities to identify threats and disrupt them. From time to time however, this use of resources is challenged. The argument being that the overall and immediate harm to citizens - deaths and injuries - from terrorism does not measure up against other risks, say for instance knife crime, or domestic violence. We are, this suggests, misled by the salience of terrorist ‘incidents’ with their attendant publicity. The resource could be used to achieve greater effect elsewhere.

This is a powerful argument in large part because it is true. True, but substantially incomplete. The reason why we, as a state, properly devote resources to counter terrorism is that terrorism seeks to achieve political ends through violence. Either directly, or indirectly through the ‘propaganda of deed’ and by weaponising the state’s (supposed over-) reaction to those deeds. As a democracy we cannot under any circumstances allow this approach to prevail, or indeed allow it the space to manifest. It is properly a national security threat because democracy is the cornerstone of our national security. If we consider Northern Ireland related terrorism, a diminished but still relevant threat, this is doubly the case because it entails an attack on the territorial integrity of the state.

I am not however, despite this lengthy preamble, principally interested in making the argument about counter-terrorism. I judge the political risk calculus acts as sufficient protection for, at least, the status-quo. I intend rather to recruit this argument in support of a greater focus on - and resource for - countering organised crime.

Organised crime is a national security issue, I will set out the reasoning below.

Organised crime seeks to set itself above, and in opposition to the rule of law. It seeks to displace through violence, and the credible threat of violence, the state’s ‘monopoly of the use of force’. It deploys corruption, and thereby damages trust in organisations and institutions essential to stable democratic functioning. It eats away at our prosperity hampering growth entwining itself with legitimate business. It harms social cohesion and sets communities against each other. Overseas, it exploits ungoverned territories and seeks to create narco- and corrupt states. It damages by these means the global security upon which national security rests. It forms alliances with, and provides an operational platform for, hostile state and non-state actors. It drives biodiversity loss through environmental crime. It exploits and disrupts global supply chains. In the case of organised immigration crime it directly threatens the integrity of our borders.

Not only is organised crime a national security threat but it also occasions serious societal harm. Here, in fact, the argument is, in fact, substantially stronger than for counter-terrorism. Drugs, firearms, sexual exploitation (including of children), mass fraud, human trafficking and modern slavery, cyber-crime, financial crime. Each associated with many deaths, injury, the loss of property. Changes in the nature of serious and organised crime features in the Chronic Risks Analysis recently published by HM Government.

I understand the argument for a focus on neighbourhood policing and ‘safer streets’. After all, this is where people live and work - though perhaps the digital domain is also important in this regard. It is where crime is personally experienced. Nevertheless, there is little point in, for instance, knowing the name of a police officer assigned to your area, a part of the neighbourhood policing ‘pledge’, if they are overwhelmed by crime associated with drugs, or organised theft of vehicles. In other words for safer streets to be delivered, and to give neighbourhood policing the space to be successful we must disrupt organised crime.

The political cost of a failure adequately to tackle organised crime must also be accounted for. Whilst an inability to deliver safer streets will give rise to dissatisfaction, a failure to tackle organised crime and corruption corrodes trust in justice and the political system itself. As with immigration crime the sense of not being ‘in control’ is particularly damaging.

By both measures - national security and citizen safety, and by any conceivable argument, economic and political, we need to accord the countering of organised crime an elevated priority.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) - charged with responsibility for combatting serious and organised crime - should properly be seen as a key part of the UK’s national security community. As a non-ministerial Department its vitally important convening and system leadership role requires underlining. Informed assessment indicates that, despite effective actions, such as the disruption of LockBit, threats from cybercrime, volume fraud, crime ‘as a service’, online child sexual exploitation are increasing, enabled by international crime groups. This cannot be allowed to persist. As policing reform is being discussed, we need to hold on to the principle that organised crime is more than simply crime - it is where national security meets societal harm ⁠meets day-to-day safety at home and in our communities.

[all prof serious articles are personal opinion … they do not reflect the views or position of any organisation with which I am associated or any roles I might hold ... thanks to friends for valued suggestions]