Assessing European futures in an age of reflexive security
Tom Vander Beken & Kristof Verfaillie
This is a preliminary version of an article that has been accepted for publication in the
journal “Policing and Society” on February 15, 2010. The journal can be found online at
www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/10439463.html
Abstract
The past decade, European assessments of organised crime have evolved into strategic future-oriented
intelligence systems. Policymakers want to be informed about coming organised crime threats and
challenges. We use the concepts of reflexive government (Dean, 1999) and reflexive security
(Rasmussen, 2001, 2004) to explore this shift in EU policing, and suggest that strategic planning in the
field of organised crime control might benefit from the use of scenario methodologies. We focus on the
assumptions that underpin scenario exercises and we outline how they might be developed.
Keywords : Organised crime, reflexive security, scenario methodologies
1
Introduction
More than a decade ago, in a double issue on law and technology (Dator and Halbert
1996), Richter H. Moore Jr. (1996) published a paper that deals with twenty-first
century organised crime and the challenges it entails for criminal justice systems.
Moore’s prototypical assessment of the future of organised crime paints a rather grim
picture: ‘twenty-first century technology will lead to nightmarish global criminal
enterprises that cannot be controlled by the traditional criminal law and judicial systems
of the nation-state’ (Moore 1996: 186). According to Moore, future criminal activities
will be more profitable than ever. Criminal organizations will invest in legitimate
companies and get involved in financial organizations and multinational corporations
management. Computer experts and financial experts will be of vital importance to
criminal enterprises focussed on computer extortion and various kinds of computer
fraud. Criminal organizations will control satellites, providing them with important
communication and tracking facilities. Organised crime will furthermore be involved in
trafficking human organs, children, waste, nuclear weapons, technology theft,
intellectual property rights violations (counterfeiting) and sexual exploitation.
According to Moore, the only reasonable solution to counter these future crime trends,
is the establishment of an international criminal code and a global criminal justice
system.
What Moore did in 1996 may not have been taken seriously by decision makers
then, but it certainly is today. Organised crime assessments that are explicitly oriented
towards the future have become a demand of many policymakers in and across Europe
(Verfaillie and Vander Beken 2008ab). Moore’s assessment is more than a fictitious
story about what the future of organised crime might look like in the 21st century. He
analysed specific information resources and trends, i.e. developments he picked up in
1996 and then followed ‘to their logical conclusions’ (Moore 1996: 185).
Future-oriented exercises of this kind raise two sets of questions: (i) what
information should be gathered for the assessment of organised crime? (ii) how should
this information be analysed to make statements about the future of organised crime?
The argument that we will develop evolves around both questions and can be
summarized along these lines: future-oriented assessments of organised crime should
2
not be limited to extrapolations of the current trends that can be discerned in police data.
Surely such exercises can be valuable, but at the same time they might impose
important limitations on the strategic planning process of police organizations. Police
data inevitably represent a particular perspective on (organised) crime. A perspective
which depends, among other things, on police strategies, activities and resources,
criminal policies and definitions, public sensibilities and the reporting of organised
crime. From an analytical and strategic point of view, this perspective on organised
crime might not contain sufficient relevant data to understand the problem and
dynamics of organised crime. Based on police data, law enforcement might for instance
establish the involvement of organised crime in legitimate businesses. These data,
however, do not necessarily allow them to make statements about the extent of this
problem, why and how certain organised crime groups became involved in these
activities and whether, or under which conditions, these activities are likely to endure.
In addition, strategic planners that focus exclusively on police data will only be able to
explore organised crime activities or issues which are already known to them. If
strategic planners furthermore adhere to the idea that the future of criminal activities
should be thought of in terms of a continuation of the past or present, and extrapolate or
calculate probabilities about future organised crime activities based on the police data
that is available to them, this too will limit the scope of assessing organised crime for
strategic planning purposes.
In sum: the central issue we should address here is ‘perspective’: how do strategic
planners perceive organised crime, and how do they expect organised crime to evolve?
Given the importance of ‘perspective’ to law enforcement strategies, we will argue that
it might be useful for law enforcement agencies and policymakers to introduce scenario
tools to their strategic planning process. We will focus on the assumptions that underpin
scenario methodologies and we will outline how scenarios might be developed in the
field of organised crime assessments. First, however, we will explain why and how
European policymakers became interested in future-oriented assessments of organised
crime. This future-oriented focus can be understood in terms of important trends in
contemporary policing such as risk assessment, proactiveness, intelligence-based
decision-making and transnational crime control. Policymakers and the law enforcement
community want to be informed about coming threats and organised crime related
3
challenges so that they can take appropriate preventive action. We will argue that the
European Union (EU) thus expects its law enforcement community to provide ‘strategic
warning’. Strategic warning methodologies are a much-debated issue in security studies
and intelligence communities, and we believe that the assessment of organised crime,
and the use of scenario methodologies in this process, might benefit from those debates.
1
A growing need for prospective organised crime assessments in the EU
Organised crime appeared on the policy agenda of European decision makers in the
beginning of the nineties, when it was seen as a transnational, European problem and no
longer a concern to individual member states (van Duyne and Vander Beken 2009).
Consequently, in November 1993, the European Council decided that an annual
strategic report on organised crime (Organised Crime Situation Report – OCSR) was to
be drafted. The OSCR would allow policymakers to better understand the problem of
organised crime within the European Union and would improve knowledge based
policymaking in this field. However, at the end of the nineties, the OCSR was criticized
within the EU. Policymakers wanted a strategic report, produced for the purpose of
strategic planning. Therefore the focus of the report had to shift from the description of
current and past criminal cases to the assessment of threats and risks related to future
developments in (organised) crime and the implications of these developments for law
enforcement within the EU (Council of the European Union 2000). On March 13, 2001
the Commission and Europol issued a Joint Report entitled ‘Towards a European
Strategy to Prevent Organised Crime’(Council of the European Union 2001a), which
proposed the development of an information collection plan reflecting a knowledgemanagement process from a multidisciplinary perspective. In the autumn of 2001, the
Belgian Presidency proposed an action plan to convert the OCSR into an annual
strategic report for planning purposes with a primary focus on the assessment of
relevant threats and risks, and on recommendations related to combating and preventing
organised crime (Council of the European Union 2001b). As the Action Plan seemed to
jump to threat assessment methodologies before solid and reliable information bases
were developed within the EU (von Lampe 2005), it was never put into practice.
4
In 2004, the The Hague Programme (Council of the European Union 2004), reaffirmed
the importance of intelligence-led law enforcement at the EU level regarding organised
crime and called again for a forward looking approach to fight organised crime in a
more pro-active manner. On October 3rd 2005, the Council concluded that from 1
January 2006 onwards, Europol was to produce an Organised Crime Threat Assessment
(OCTA) instead of its annual Organised Crime Situation Reports (Council of the
European Union 2005), as an important step in the development of a common
intelligence model by Europol and the member states. Since 2006 three OCTA’s have
been presented. The 2008 OCTA expresses the ambition of this report: ‘To support
decision-makers in the best possible way, the OCTA provides a well-targeted
qualitative assessment of the threat from OC. The OCTA is based on a multi-source
approach, including law enforcement and non-law enforcement contributions. These
include various European agencies as well as the private sector. A specific emphasis is
put on elaborating the benefits of an intensified public-private partnership. The OCTA
helps to close the gap between strategic findings and operational activities. The OCTA
helps to identify the highest priorities, which will then be effectively tackled with the
appropriate law enforcement instruments’ (Europol 2008: 9).
This brief history of European organised crime policy (and policing) reveals
important shifts and strategic assumptions: Organised crime should not (can not) be
controlled by individual member states but requires a transnational, multi-agency
approach, with a particular emphasis on public-private partnerships. Law enforcement
strategy building needs to be based on a multi-source approach, i.e. requires more than
analysis of police data. Reports describing the past criminal (and law enforcement)
activities should be (and have been) replaced by assessments that have forward looking
and future oriented ambitions. ‘Prevention’ and ‘multidisciplinary actions’ are
keywords in the European discourse. Not the organised crime situation is of interest, but
the possible risk or threat of organised crime to society.
2
The problem of ‘risk’ in the assessment of organised crime
The European Union’s approach to organised crime subscribes to what Maguire (2000)
has defined as intelligence-led policing (see also: Heaton 2000, Cope 2004, Sheptycki
5
2005, Maguire and John 2006, Ratcliffe and Guidetti 2008, Ratcliffe, 2008): ‘a
strategic, future-oriented and targeted approach to crime control, focusing upon the
identification, analysis and ‘management’ of persisting and developing ‘problems’ or
‘risks’ (which may be particular people, activities or areas), rather than on the reactive
investigation and detection of individual crimes’ (Maguire 2000: 315).
Maguire discussed the emergence of intelligence-led policing in the context of
recent theories about the nature of crime control in late modern societies, particularly
Ericson and Haggerty’s seminal portrayal of the core work of the (public) police as ‘risk
business’. In Policing the Risk Society, Ericson and Haggerty (1997) challenge Bittner’s
influential perspective on Western police, with its focus on order maintenance and
coercion (Bittner 1970). In the risk society, police have evolved into knowledge
workers or information brokers: their defining capacity is to gather information about
security risks (e.g. particular populations) with new surveillance technologies, and
communicate this information to other institutions (e.g. insurance companies, welfare
organizations). These institutions too operate based on a risk paradigm and require
information from the police for their own risk management. It is precisely this demand
for information about security risks from a variety of risk-oriented institutions that has
had a profound transforming effect on police structures, routines, strategies and
intelligence requirements.
Ericson and Haggerty’s perspective of police as information brokers, involved in
risk management and risk communication, provides an interesting framework to analyze
the policing of organised crime at the EU level. Following their argument, however,
three questions emerge: (i) what are security risks? (ii) how can police produce
knowledge about security risks? (iii) what does it mean to assess and manage security
risks (from a multi-agency perspective)?
The European OCTA’s seem to be based on the assumption that security risks
are risks in themselves: strategic planners believe it is possible to collect sufficient
relevant data about organised crime and use this data to assess and manage security
risks in an objective manner. Based on various conceptual models, they distill crime
trends from known past criminal cases. These trends are then used for forward looking
purposes and strategy building (for risk assessment applications in organised crime
assessments see Vander Beken 2004). The assessment of risk thus requires the
6
introduction of more technocratic and expert-based forms of probabilistic or actuarial
risk calculation, focused on generating quantitative estimates of trends, patterns and
impacts of crime events.
In the assessment of organised crime on the European level, ‘risk’ is conceived
in one particular way, i.e. as the outcome of a quantitative calculation of a future given.
Elsewhere (Verfaillie et al 2006, Verfaillie and Vander Beken 2008a and Verfaillie and
Vander Beken 2008b), we have argued that this perspective on risk, and thus the future
of organised crime, suggests that organised crime will evolve towards a certain future,
or as Moore (1996) put it: that trends can be followed to their logical conclusion. The
conception of the future as a continuation, a projection, of past trends is a problem in
the field of organised crime assessments (see also: Sheptycki 2004). Strategic analysts
might not have sufficient data to discern sensible trends, patterns or frequencies, and the
quality of these analyses is highly dependent on the quality of the available data.
Predictive analysis and forecasting methods using multivariate data, such as linear
regression against time and econometric methods, are predicated on the ability to
demonstrate causal relationships between identified variables. This means that strategic
analysts first and foremost need to have a clear conceptual focus or idea about the
nature of the problem at hand, what variables to use, and how these variables interact or
should be connected. This might be difficult in light of criminal activities, like
organised crime, that can be covert, and often seem ephemeral and fluid, but there is
more. Complexity scientists have recently advanced this debate as they argue that no
traditional causal (i.e. mechanistic or determined) relationships between environment,
agency and criminal activity can be found to explain the dynamics in organised crime
(e.g. Van Calster 2006). As such, complexity scientists do not discard the idea of
science nor do they challenge the idea that we can describe and explain social practices
like organised crime. Quite the contrary. What they challenge is the idea of mechanistic
cause-effect relations1. Crime is the emergent outcome of complex interactions, and can
thus be understood in terms of narrative analysis or interpretative (ethnographic) case
study approaches (e.g. Van Calster 2005, 2006). We can abandon the idea of prediction
as a goal of inquiry without abandoning science or the need to come to a profound
qualitative understanding of criminal contexts and interactions (see also: Lippens 2006).
In policy times obsessed with controlling the future, it is important that we avoid
7
identifying future-oriented action and proactiveness with prediction or that we use
predictive statements as a legitimate basis for preemptive law enforcement action
(Verfaillie and Vander Beken, 2008b). When discussing the future of organised crime,
the challenges and threats we distinguish, are very much based on our current
understanding of organised crime. The past 60 years, this knowledge base, our
understanding of organised crime, has changed considerably, both in empirical as in
theoretical terms (Levi, 2003; Edwards and Levi, 2008). Even though scholars have
come to develop perspectives that allow us to grasp organised crime in more meaningful
ways than before, and even though our current perspectives and models clearly serve a
meaningful analytical purpose today, they may not prove to be a useful guide tomorrow,
for future developments. If, for instance, in the 1950s assessments had been made about
future organised crime developments, planners would most likely have done so in light
of assumptions grounded in the bureaucratic model. Similarly, contemporary planners
will tend to perceive organised crime through the focus of network perspectives. In
other words, the future of organised crime is inevitably our description of the future of
organised crime. Consequently, a single, predetermined future that can be measured,
assessed or predicted independent from our assumptions does not exist. Statements
about the future of organised crime are a reflection of our current perception, our
current understanding of organised crime.
Therefore, in addition to the problem of defining a clear analytical focus and
acquiring sufficient qualitative data, forecasts are only meaningful if strategic planners
and policymakers believe that established patterns of criminal behavior will remain
stable and continue into the future (see also: Cavelty and Mauer 2009)2.
The OCTA’s recognize the limitations of quantitative calculations based on law
enforcement data to a certain extent. Policymakers find themselves faced with
uncertainty and unpredictability, and they have tried to resolve these issues with the
introduction of a multi-agency and multi-source approach. Though such perspectives
are presented as answers to deal with uncertainty, they contain many elements of the
former, more traditional approaches towards intelligence (Sheptycki and Ratcliffe
2008). As before, such approaches or strategies are based on the assumption that
uncertainty can be overcome by developing new information cycles and focuses.
8
There is a final, and more fundamental problem with the particular notion of risk
that underpins the European assessments of organised crime. We argued that these
assessments equate ‘risk’ to quantitative or actuarial forms of calculation, and we then
suggested that in the field of organised crime the strategic ambitions and objectives that
come with this risk notion are untenable. We should, however, not conclude that
security risks are therefore incalculable. We do need to revisit our understanding of
‘risk’ in this field and examine how contemporary debates about security in the ‘risk
society’ might deepen our understanding of the EU’s approach to organised crime.
First, it might be useful to abandon the idea of risk as the outcome of a
quantitative calculation of a future and objective given, and not only because of the
difficulties we encountered so far. Again, the problem here is the idea of risk as an
objective future given that can be assessed apart from our assumptions. We should
replace this notion with the idea that nothing is a risk in itself, which at the same time
means that anything can be risk (Ewald 1991). From this perspective, risks are events
that we (e.g. strategic planners) have turned into a calculable form, so that they become
‘governable in particular ways, with particular techniques and for particular goals’
(Dean 1999: 177). It is thus impossible to speak of incalculable risks or to make a
distinction between calculable and incalculable risks. According to Dean (1999: 191),
‘risk and its techniques are plural and heterogeneous and its significance cannot be
exhausted by a narrative about a shift from quantitative calculation of risk to the
globalization of incalculable risks’.
The debate about the nature of security risks, and how such risks should be assessed
and managed is extremely important to police organizations. If we follow Dean’s
argument that a risk rationality is not necessarily a quantitative calculation of
probabilities, but that different risk rationalities can be identified, this has consequences
for the kinds of expertise that law enforcement will call upon or develop, the policing
strategies that will be developed, technologies and methodologies that will be used and
so forth. More important however, is Dean’s (1999: 196) suggestion that the
pervasiveness and diversity of risk rationalities is in fact linked to a particular notion of
government, one he refers to as ‘reflexive government’. Scholars in the field of security
and governmentality studies have argued that the shift toward reflexive government has
9
a significant influence on the security agenda (Rasmussen, 2004). We should therefore
explore the significance of reflexive government to the EU policing of organised crime.
3
Towards the reflexive policing of organised crime
Scholars in the field of security studies and experts in the intelligence community
have come across issues very similar to the ones we have discussed in the context of
policing organised crime. There seems to be an important conceptual blurring of
boundaries between what is expected from intelligence agencies and the policing of
organised crime at the EU level (see also: Sheptycki 2000, Bowling and Foster, 2002).
Because European policymakers want strategic reports about coming threats and
challenges, they seem to move law enforcement closer to the field of ‘strategic
warning’. In the intelligence community, however, strategic warning seems to be a
much-debated issue.
Strategic warning can be defined as: ‘activities that provide vital support to national
decision makers in their principal strategic missions – that is, understanding the
complex geo strategic environment, facilitating a larger vision of objectives, assessing
alternatives, determining strategy and protecting against consequential surprise’
(Cooper 2005: 16 cited Cavalty and Mauer 2009: 124). In the wake of the Cold War,
intelligence communities faced new security problems that put pressure on traditional
concepts of strategic warning. Cavalty and Mauer (2009: 123) have argued that the
current problems with strategic warning arise from a reliance on analytic tools,
methodologies and processes that are unfit to deal with the new, globally networked
challenges. The intelligence community recognizes these problem to a certain extent, as
important methodological innovations have occurred in the field of the ‘monitoring’
(predictive and forecasting methodologies) and ‘discovery’ (identification of new or
unknown patterns) of new of security issues. Cavalty and Mauer argue that although
these innovations might improve strategic warning under certain conditions, they
nonetheless seem to disregard a fundamental epistemological change that has taken
place in the field of security and intelligence: the end – means rationality, or the idea
that every action produces clear (linear) consequences (and thus implies predictability),
is gradually being replaced by a reflexive rationality.
10
The idea of a ‘reflexive rationality’ refers to Beck’s concept of ‘reflexive
modernization’3. As Latour (2003: 36) has argued, the notion ‘reflexive’ does not imply
that today, people are somehow more aware or conscious about the world they live in
than they were in the past or than people in previous phases of modernity. ‘Reflexive’
means that we have become aware that ‘mastery is impossible and that control over
actions is now seen as a complete modernist fiction’ (Latour 2003: 36). Latour’s
provocative statement is not a plea for relativism or the reduction of science to politics.
What he suggests is that policymakers and politicians have become aware that policy
outcomes can not be fully controlled, and that (criminal) policymaking is inevitably
faced with unintended outcomes or unexpected circumstances (see also: Rose and
Miller 1992, Tate 2004, Gill 2006, Innes 2006). Faced with this uncertainty,
policymakers have begun to scrutinize the policies and tools they use to control
practices (like crime) or ‘society’. This rationality is what scholars have defined as
‘reflexive government’. Government begins to conceive its task as ‘operating upon
existing forms of government rather than governing either things or processes’ (Dean
1999: 211). Government mechanisms thus become a problem, a risk to citizens and
customers, and risk management strategies (audits, performance indicators, quality
management etc…) are needed to transform these mechanism and render them more
transparent and efficient. According to Dean (1999: 197), a reflexive rationality does
not imply that policymakers have given up on the transformation of society. They
simply believe that this transformation can be accomplished by acting upon the
mechanisms through which society is governed.
Rasmussen (2001: 286, 2004, see also Williams 2008) distils three constitutive
elements of reflexive politics from Beck’s work: ‘management’, the ‘presence of the
future’ and the ‘boomerang effect’. Policymakers now focus on continuously managing
processes instead of outcomes, which are believed to be beyond control. Decisions are
made in light of the future: ‘it is not present actions that are to produce future results,
but perceived future results that produce present actions’ (Rasmussen, 2001: 293).
Precisely because outcomes can not be controlled and decision making is done in light
of the unknown future, reflexive policymaking is always about risk, and becomes a risk
in itself. The third element of a reflexive politics, the boomerang effect, thus points to
11
the idea that security issues become perceived as the consequences of policymakers’
own actions.
According to Rasmussen, these elements are at the core of a rationality that is
changing the security agenda, i.e. the way we define security issues and their control, a
shift he coins with the notion of ‘reflexive security’. The past decade many
criminologists and police scholars have discerned trends in crime control that fit with
the framework of reflexive security (e.g. Garland 2001, Bowling and Foster 2002,
Loader and Sparks 2002, Mazerolle and Ransley 2006). This rationality has important
consequences for the further development of the EU policing of organised crime. As the
EU continues to develop its OCTA reports, with their strategic, future-oriented risk
focus and transnational, multi-agency approach to organised crime, policymakers and
strategic planners will grow more sensitive to the idea that outcomes (crime) can not be
controlled, that decisions should be made based on a future – oriented focus (e.g.
intelligence-led policing), and that the way we deal with issues like organised crime
become a problem in their own right, i.e. the threat of organised crime might be a
consequence of our own actions.
If the policing of organised crime in the EU is perceived in terms of a reflexive
rationality, this raises important questions for strategic planners: what tools can they use
in such a framework to assess organised crime? What are the ethical implications of a
reflexive security agenda? So far we have argued that we should be careful not to
identify forward-looking approaches with strategies and policy tools that are based on a
logic of stability, certainty and prediction (e.g. ‘the enlargement of the EU will lead to
more organised crime’), especially when such a predictive logic is used to legitimise
pre-emptive law enforcement action. On the other hand, we should not take a relativist
stance either: we should avoid making policy choices that are not evidence-based nor
should we prepare exclusively and systematically for worst case scenarios (see e.g.
Goldsmith 2008). If we avoid these pitfalls, developing a forward-looking approach
becomes a rather different undertaking. We will argue that particular scenario
methodologies can meet some of the concerns we have raised thus far. We will focus on
the assumptions that underpin such scenarios and we will outline how they might be
developed.
12
4
Scenarios and the reflexive policing of organised crime
Schwartz and Ogilvy (2004, p. 2) define scenarios as ‘narratives of alternative
environments in which today’s decisions may be played out. They are not predictions.
Nor are they strategies. Instead they are more like hypotheses of different futures
specifically designed to highlight the risks and opportunities involved in specific
strategic issues’.
The use of scenarios remains a much debated issue, primarily because of the
conceptual and methodological diversity, as well as the ambiguity that exists about the
concrete effects scenarios might have on successful strategic planning. Yet, they have
been applied in many fields and have proven to be valuable in the context of corporate
strategy building, catalysing change and action, stimulating collaborative learning and
creating a shared vision and increased alignment around strategic direction (Scearce and
Fulton 2004, Bradfield et. al. 2005, see also: Verfaillie and Vander Beken 2008a, and
Verfaillie and Vander Beken 2008b).
We have argued that the past decade, European assessments of organised crime
have evolved into strategic future-oriented intelligence systems, and we have identified
several important difficulties that come with this trend. In an age of reflexive security,
scenarios do not predict the future of organised crime, nor do they replace information
gathering methodologies and crime intelligence applications that support concrete
criminal investigations. In the context of strategic planning and strategic warning for
law enforcement purposes, scenarios can help strategic planners and policymakers:
(i)
comprehend the complex geo strategic environment, facilitate a larger
vision of objectives, and assess alternative strategies.
(ii)
understand organised crime activities, as scenario studies will prompt
them to make use of a scientific knowledge base about organised
crime.
(i)
reflect on how organised crime activities might be a consequence of
their own actions and policies.
13
Scenario studies are sensitising tools that encourages strategic planners to reflect
on how their strategic choices might play out, and at the same time force them to
examine the assumptions and the knowledge base that underpins these choices. For
instance, scenario planners might wonder which developments could be of vital
importance to criminal markets. What has the potential to significantly change or have
an impact on these markets? And what if that something would actually occur? What
would the consequences be? Can policymakers in light of these reflections afford to
make choices and set priorities without taking these developments into account? These
considerations are the central idea behind scenario studies. In the field of organised
crime, law enforcement will inevitably have to reflect on how their own actions, or the
actions and decisions of policymakers might influence or impact on organised crime, for
better or worse. A scenario study about criminal markets might thus reveal that these
markets are often the very consequence of the policies that were drafted to ban certain
behaviour (e.g. the drug market), or that the ways in which such activities are policed
become a problem in their own right.
5
Making organised crime scenarios
In the scenario studies we developed thus far (Vander Beken 2006, Verfaillie et. al.
2006), we have relied on the work of Scearce and Fulton (2004), who developed a basic
process for scenario thinking exercises in the non–profit sector (see also Shell
International 2003, Centraal Planbureau 2003, National Intelligence Council 2004).
Scearce and Fulton distinguish five steps in a scenario building process: (a) identify
your focal issue, (b) explore the dynamics that drive or shape the focal issue (c)
synthesize and combine the driving forces that were identified to create scenarios (d)
situate and imagine the focal issue in the scenarios, and (e) monitor.
5.1
Identify the focal issue
A scenario exercise begins with the identification of a focal issue. In other words: what
are the scenarios about? What is the strategic issue we want to address? Defining a
sensible focal issue is important because it will serve as a guide for the construction of
14
the scenarios and for the kind of information that should be gathered. Different
considerations are in order:
(a) Scenario tools intend to make strategic planners aware of strategic issues and risks
and compel them to critically assess their assumptions about the strategic issue they
wish to address. Police organizations and policymakers should therefore explore
strategic issues and contexts that relate to their mandate. In other words, if scenarios
should guide strategic decision making they should relate to decisions that can be made.
(b) Scenarios require a time frame and the input from multiple perspectives throughout
the scenario building process. Both issues are important if we want scenarios to
encourage innovative, exploratory thinking. The introduction of multiple perspectives in
the scenario building process is important to question assumptions and self-evidences.
A scenario time frame is needed to determine the limits of the storylines. The matter of
peak oil, for example, and the fact that oil will one day seize to be an energy source is
undoubtedly important but is not likely to be relevant for scenarios with a 5–year time
horizon. Scenarios need to be credible and relevant to decision makers, i.e. they need to
relate to their contemporary worlds.
(c) “Organised crime” can have many implicit or explicit meanings and many different,
sometimes opposing, definitions, exist. Van Duyne (1996) once described organised
crime as a phantom, created by the assumptions of those that define it. More and more
scholars therefore contest the analytical utility of this term (Levi 2002). Even in policy
circles, the use of “organised crime” as a key analytical concept seems to be on the
retreat (Dorn 2009).
In other words, if strategic planners use the concept of ‘organised crime’ for scenario
planning purposes, they need to be specific and clearly define what is meant by this
concept from an analytical point of view (e.g. Edwards and Levi 2008). Legal
definitions are important but might be less useful for operational or analytical purposes.
Broad generalizations and/or unfounded political or popular assumptions about criminal
intentions should be avoided. For instance, quite often organised criminals are believed
15
to operate based on rational economic decision-making (“they want to make a profit”).
From this perspective every human being is believed to perceive opportunities in the
same manner. This is not the case. Opportunities are perceived by people, and people
may define opportunities (or dismiss them) based on specific and situated learning
experiences, (a lack of) knowledge, cultural sensitivities or emotional motives.
Strategic planners therefore need conceptual models that clarify why they define
human behaviour or interactions among people as ‘organised crime’, and translate these
definitions into a concrete analytical and operational focus. This is precisely why
sensible scenario studies can not be drafted without consulting scholarly analyses on
organised crime. For instance, for earlier scenario work about organised crime, we used
a ‘spectrum of enterprise’ concept (Vander Beken 2004) to develop the focal issue of
our scenarios. Based on this perspective, it was useful to draft scenarios about criminal
markets (Verfaillie and Vander Beken 2008a) or about the vulnerability of economic
sectors to organised crime (Verfaillie and Vander Beken 2008b). For the scenarios
about the criminal markets we developed the focal issue: ‘what could the future look
like for criminal markets in the EU in 2015?’ For the scenarios about the vulnerability
of economic sectors to organised crime the focal issue of our exercise was: ‘What could
the future look like for the vulnerability of economic sectors in the EU in 2015?’Again,
the purpose of framing the focal issue this way is analysis and exploration, not
prediction.
5.2
Explore the dynamics that drive or shape the focal issue
Scenarios are narratives or stories that attempt to make sense of our strategic
environment. The central concern in the second phase of the scenario thinking process is
therefore the exploration of the various dynamics that drive or shape the focal issue.
These driving forces (Scearce and Fulton 2004) are those shifts in the broader
environment, i.e., social, technological, economic, environmental, and political trends
that have the potential to shape the focal issue. We argued elsewhere (Verfaillie et. al.
2006) that the exploration of driving forces is an iterative process that involves three
different steps.
16
1. The first step is an exploration of the nature of the context: what trends can be found
in the broader environment? An example of such trends is the restructuring of European
welfare states and of Central and Eastern European member states.
2. A second step involves analysis of strategic planners’ knowledge about the dynamics
of the organised crime issue at hand. For instance, what do we know about the dynamics
of criminal markets? What do we know about the vulnerability of sectors? What is
known about the involvement of organised crime groups in certain sectors? What kind
of criminal activities are they involved in? How do they operate?
The combination of these insights structure the storylines of the various
scenarios. For instance, if research findings suggest that the difference in the member
states’ level of welfare has the potential to spawn criminal markets in the EU, and if at
the same time we find that member states are restructuring in ways that influence the
level of welfare in the EU, we can describe stories or ‘worlds’ for the criminal markets
in the EU in which these evolutions play out in a plausible way.
There is no fixed methodology to come up with a list of driving forces, and we
found that the most effective and efficient way to surface these forces was to combine
the use of brainstorm sessions, extensive literature review and structured interviews
with key decision-makers, or people that can contribute different, conflicting or
countervailing perspectives, like scholars and other experts in the field of organised
crime. At the end of the first and the second step we have information about dominant
trends and debates in the socio – economic, political and environmental domain, and
about the dynamics of the organised crime issue at stake.
3. In a third and final step this information is structured to create scenarios. The various
driving forces that we collected are to be divided into two categories: ‘predetermined
elements’, and ‘uncertainties’. Scearce and Fulton (2004: 27) describe the
predetermined elements, as ‘forces of change that are relatively certain over a given
future timeframe, like a long-term shift in demographics’. Uncertainties are described as
‘unpredictable driving forces, such as the nature of public opinion or shifts in social
values that will have an important impact on the area of interest’. Examples of
uncertainties for organised crime groups or criminal markets could be law enforcement
17
strategies or criminal policies. The distinction that is made between the two kinds of
driving forces is not absolute and should not be brought back to a difference in
predictability. Social developments cannot be predicted. What is meant here is a
difference in stability. In that sense, shifts in demographics tend to show more stability
than ‘public opinion’.
5.3
Synthesize and combine the driving forces that were identified to create scenarios
In the third phase of the scenario building process, the driving forces that were
identified have to be synthesized and combined to create scenarios. The numerous, and
possibly very different, driving forces need to be narrowed down and prioritised
according to two criteria: the degree of importance to the focal issue, and the degree of
uncertainty surrounding those forces. The goal of prioritisation is to identify the two
driving forces that are most important and most uncertain to the focal issue. These
driving forces are the critical uncertainties (Scearce and Fulton 2004), i.e. the
foundation of the scenario set. The other uncertainties that were identified in earlier
stages of the scenario process can be used in a later phase of the scenario building
process.
When the critical uncertainties are defined they are used to create axes of
uncertainty (Scearce and Fulton 2004), i.e. a continuum of possibilities ranging between
two extremes. The research we did for our scenarios about criminal markets in the EU,
resulted in two foundations of the scenario matrix: ‘impact of globalisation’ and the
‘regulation of goods and services’. Both were identified as highly uncertain key drivers
that can significantly define or change the nature or direction of criminal markets, i.e.
places within which goods and services are exchanged whose production, sale and
consumption are forbidden or strictly regulated by the majority of national states and/or
by international legislation. To build the scenarios, the two key uncertainties are
combined. The ‘Policy Markets’ scenario portrays the EU in which there is a
differentiated regulation of goods and services, and a decreased dualisation.
‘Globalising and Fading Markets’ combines a narrowing gap between the have’s and
have not’s, and a uniform regulation of goods and services. ‘Patchwork Markets’
pictures the EU characterized by increased dualisation, and national differences in the
production, sale and consumption of goods and services are defined. ‘Monomorphic
18
Markets’ is a scenario that combines more dualisation and a uniform regulation of
goods and services in the EU. The key issue here is to draft plausible and nuanced
stories that challenge the assumptions we make about the focal issue and that might
point to strategic risks.
5.4
Situate and imagine the focal issue in the scenarios
In this fourth phase, the focal issue is situated and imagined in each of the scenarios.
For instance, what are the consequences for the criminal markets in the EU in a scenario
that combines more dualisation and a uniform regulation of goods and services in the
EU? What are the consequences for criminal markets in a scenario, a world, where the
gap between the have’s and have not’s narrows, and a uniform regulation of goods and
services is put in place.
5.5
Monitor
Monitoring tools are not strictly part of a scenario exercise but they can be developed to
prompt strategic planners and policymakers to adapt and adjust their strategies.
Conclusion
In 1996, Moore made an assessment of organised crime in the 21st century. He
analysed and detected trends and ‘followed them to their logical conclusions’. This
analysis resulted in a picture of organised crime as a highly globalized and
technological field of organizations capable of outsmarting government intervention.
Based on this perspective, Moore suggested the establishment of an international
criminal justice system and the development of an international criminal code.
We argued that his assessment points to two important issues that strategic planners
should address in the current debate about developing organised crime assessments: (i)
‘stability’ and (ii) ‘perspective’. Moore’s analysis is valuable if we assume stability in
the field of organised crime. In other words, if people involved in organised crime will
exploit opportunities based on the motives we attribute to them, and if they continue to
19
be involved in the kinds of activities they are currently involved in, we might imagine
what the logical conclusions of those trends might be. We suggested that the assumption
of stability holds certain risks, precisely because our perceptions of the future are based
on what we currently know about organised crime. For sure we can develop sound
scientific perspectives that allow us to grasp organised crime in more meaningful ways
than before, but these perspectives may not prove to be useful tomorrow, for future
developments. The debate about the limits and the nature of forward-looking
approaches is important in times governed by a reflexive rationality. We used
Rasmussen’s concept of reflexive security to point to a shift in the EU perspective on
organised crime control. This shift toward a reflexive rationality implies that the
European policing of organised crime is growing more sensitive to the idea that
outcomes (crime) can not be controlled, that decisions should be made with a future –
oriented focus, and that the threat of organised crime might be a consequence of our
own actions. We argued that a reflexive security agenda raises important challenges for
law enforcement and strategic planners. Strategic decision making might become overly
focussed on worst case scenarios or might be limited in light of perspectives on the
future that are not evidence-based or merely political. It was furthermore unclear how
traditional assessment methodologies might allow policymakers and law enforcement to
explore and analyse the implications and consequences of their own actions.
Both the issue of ‘stability’ and ‘perspective’ provided the basis for our argument
that scenario methodologies might be useful for strategic planners in an age of reflexive
security, and we outlined a methodology that, we believe, can meet some of the
concerns and challenges that were raised. As the reflexive security agenda unfolds, we
should further explore how this effects the policing of organised crime in the EU, on the
level of the EU institutions as in the member states. We believe that a context of
reflexive security merits a more profound analysis and development of methodologies
that can guide information gathering and analysis for strategic purposes, while urging
planners to critically evaluate their choices, and the assumptions that underpin these
choices. As such, scenario methodologies first and foremost provide policymakers with
an analytical mirror. Holding this mirror is perhaps the most valuable contribution
scientists can make to policymakers’ demand for more future-oriented thinking.
20
21
References
Bittner, E., 1970. The functions of the police in modern society: A review of background
factors, current practices, and possible role models. Rockville: National Institute of
Mental Health, Center for Studies of Crime and Delinquency.
Bowling, B. and Foster, J., 2002. Policing and the police. In: M. Maguire, R. Morgan,
and R. Reiner Eds. Oxford Handbook of Criminology. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
980-1033.
Bradfield, R., Wright, G., Burt, G., Cairns, G. and Van Der Heijden, K., 2005. The
origins and evolution of scenario techniques in long range business planning. Futures,
37(8), 795-812.
Cavalty, M.D. and Mauer, V., 2009. Postmodern Intelligence: Strategic Warning in an
Age of Reflexive Intelligence. Security Dialogue, 40 (2), 123-144.
Centraal Planbureau, 2003. Four Futures of Europe. Den Haag: CPB. Available at:
http://www.cpb.nl/nl/pub/cpbreeksen/bijzonder/49/. [accessed 15 January 2010].
Cope, N., 2004. Intelligence led policing or policing led intelligence? Integrating
volume crime analysis into policing. British Journal of Criminology, 44(2), 188-203.
Council of Europe, Octopus Programme, 2004. Council of Europe Organised Crime
Situation Report 2004. Focus on the Threat of Cybercrime [online]. Available from:
http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/cooperation/economiccrime/organisedcrime/Organised%20Cr
ime%20Situation%20Report%202004.pdf [accessed 15 January 2010].
Council of the European Union, 14959/1/01, Crimorg 133, Brussels, 10 December
2001.
22
Dator, J. and Halbert, D., 1996. Law and Technology. Technological Forecasting and
Social Change, 52 (2-3), 101-268.
Dean, M., 1999. Governmentality. Power and Rule in Modern Society. London: Sage.
Edwards, A. and Levi, M., 2008. Researching the organization of serious crimes.
Criminology and Criminal Justice, 8(4), 363-388.
Ericson, R. and Haggerty, K., 1997. Policing the risk society. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
European Commission, 2005. The Hague Programme - Ten priorities for the next five
years. Official Journal of the European Communities, C 53, 3 March 2005.
Europol, 2005. European Union Organised Crime Report 2004 [online]. Available
from: http://www.europol.europa.eu/ [accessed 25 January 2010].
Europol, 2006. EU Organised Crime Threat Assessment [online]. Available from:
http://www.europol.europa.eu/ [accessed 25 January 2010].
Europol, 2007. EU Organised Crime Threat Assessment [online]. Available from:
http://www.europol.europa.eu/ [accessed 25 January 2010].
Europol, 2008. OCTA. EU Organised Crime Threat Assessment 2008. Available at
http://www.europol.europa.eu/. [accessed 25 January 2010].
Ewald, F., 1991. Insurance and Risk. In: G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller, eds. The
Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 197-210.
Garland, D., 2001. The Culture of Control. Crime and Social Order in Contemporary
Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
23
Gill, P., 2006. Not just joining the dots but crossing the borders and bridging the voids:
Constructing security networks after 11 September 2001. Policing and Society, 16(1),
27–49.
Goldsmith, A., 2008. The governance of terror: Precautionary logic and counterterrorist
law reform after September 11. Law & Policy, 30(2), 141–167.
Heaton, R., 2000. The prospects for intelligence-led policing: Some historical and
quantitative considerations. Policing and Society, 9(4), 337-356.
Innes, M., 2006. Policing uncertainty: Countering terror through community
intelligence and democratic policing. The ANNALS of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, 605, 222-241.
Latour, B., 2003. Is Re-modernization Occurring – And If So, How to Prove It? A
Commentary on Ulrich Beck. Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 20(2), 35–48.
Loader, I. and Sparks, R., 2002. Contemporary landscapes of crime Order and Control:
Governance, Risk and Globalization. In: M. Maguire, R. Morgan, and R. Reiner Eds.
Oxford Handbook of Criminology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 83 –111.
Maguire, M., 2000. Policing by Risks and Targets: Some Dimensions and Implications
of Intelligence-Led Crime Control. Policing and Society, 9 (4), 315-336
Maguire, M. and John, T., 2006. Intelligence led policing, managerialism and
community engagement: Competing priorities and the role of the National Intelligence
Model in the UK. Policing and Society, 16(1), 67-85.
Levi, M., 2002. The organization of serious crimes. In: M. Maguire, R. Morgan, and R.
Reiner eds. The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
878-913.
24
Luhmann, N. 1998. Describing the Future, in N. Luhmann (Ed.), Observations on
Modernity, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 66-74
Mazerolle, L. and Ransley, J., 2006. Third Party Policing. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Moore, R.H. Jr., 1996. Twenty-First Century Law to Meet the Challenge of TwentyFirst Century Organized Crime. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 52 (23), 185-197.
National Intelligence Council, 2004. Mapping the Global Future: a Dialogue about the
Future with Nongovernmental Experts, Government printing office, Pittsburg. Available
at http://www.foia.cia.gov/2020/2020.pdf [accessed 25 January 2010]
Ratcliffe, J.H., 2008. Intelligence-Led Policing. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.
Ratcliffe, J.H. and Guidetti, R., 2008. State police investigative structure and the
adoption of intelligence-led policing. Policing: An International Journal of Police
Strategies and Management, vol. 31 (1), 109-128.
Popper, K. 1957, 2002. The Poverty of Historicism. New York: Routledge.
Rasmussen, M.V., 2001. Reflexive Security: Nato and International Risk Society,
Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 30, 285–309.
Rasmussen, M.V., 2004. It Sounds Like a Riddle: Strategic Studies, the War on Terror
and Risk, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 33, 381–95.
Ratcliffe J., and Sheptycki, J., 2008. Setting the Strategic Agenda, in J. Ratcliffe (ed.),
Strategic Thinking in Criminal Intelligence. Annadale, NSW: The Federation Press,
194-209.
25
Rose, N. and Miller, P., 1992. Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of
Government, British Journal of Sociology 43(2), 173–205.
Scearce, D. and Fulton, K., 2004. What if? The Art of Scenario Thinking for Nonprofits
[online]. Global Business Network. Available from:
http://www.gbn.com/ArticleDisplayServlet.srv?aid=32655 [accessed 25 January 2010].
Shell International, 2003. Scenarios: An Explorer’s Guide. Global Business
Environment/Shell International, Available at:
http://wwwstatic.shell.com/static/aboutshell/downloads/our_strategy/shell_global_scenarios/scenari
o_explorersguide.pdf [accessed 25 January 2010].
Sheptycki, J., 2000. Issues in Transnational Policing. London: Routledge.
Sheptycki, J., 2004. Organizational Pathologies in Police Intelligence Systems. Some
Contributions to the Lexicon of Intelligence-Led Policing. European Journal of
Criminology, vol. 1 (3), 307-332.
Sheptycki, J. 2005. Transnational policing. The Canadian Review of Policing Research,
vol.1. Available at: http://crpr.icaap.org/index.php/crpr/article/view/31/48 [accessed 25
January 2010]
Schwartz, P., and Ogilvy, J., 2004. Plotting Your Scenarios. An Introduction to the Art
and Process of Scenario Planning [online]. Global Business Network. Available from:
http://www.gbn.com/consulting/article_details.php?id=24 [accessed 25 January 2010].
Tate, G. 2004. Modernity and the ‘failure’ of crime control, in: R. Hil and G. Tate (ed.).
Hard lessons: reflections on governance and crime control in late modernity,
Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 18-32
26
Van Calster, P. 2005. Georganiseerde criminaliteit als emergent fenomeen van
complexe wisselwerkingsprocessen, Brussels: VUB
Van Calster, P., 2006. Re-visiting Mr. Nice. On organized crime as conversational
interaction. Crime Law and Social Change, 45 (4-5), 337-359.
Vander Beken, T., 2004. Risky Business: A Risk–based Methodology to Measure
Organized Crime. Crime, Law and Social Change, 41 (5), 471-516.
van Duyne, P., 1996. The Phantom and Threat of Organized Crime. Crime, Law and
Social Change, 19:103-142.
van Duyne, P.C., and Vander Beken, T., 2009. The incantations of the EU organised
crime policy making. Crime, Law and Social Change, 51 (2), 261-281.
Verfaillie, K. and Vander Beken, T., 2008a. Interesting times: European criminal
markets in 2015. Futures, 40 (5), 438-450.
Verfaillie, K. and Vander Beken, T., 2008b. Proactive policing and the assessment of
organized crime. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies &
Management, 31 (4), 534-552.
Verfaillie, K., Vander Beken, T. and Defruytier, M., 2006. Thinking about Future and
Long-term Assessments. A Methodological Study, In: Vander Beken, T. Editor, ed.,
European organised crime scenarios for 2015. Antwerp-Apeldoorn: Maklu Publishers,
3-29.
Von Lampe, K., 2005. Making the second step before the first: Assessing organized
crime. Crime, Law & Social Change, 42 (4-5), 227–259.
Williams, Michael J., 2008. ‘(In)Security Studies, Reflexive Modernization and the
Risk Society’, Cooperation and Conflict, 43(1): 57–79.
27
1
It was Popper (1957/2002: 149) who most famously argued against the notion that change (future) can
be foreseen because it is ruled by an unchanging law. According to Popper, historicism, or the idea that
evolution is underpinned by laws and is determined, is founded upon a misunderstanding of the methods
of physics. Historical prediction, which would have to be attained by discovering the “rhythms” or the
“patterns”, the “laws” or the “trends” that underlie the evolution of history, can and should not be the
aimof the social sciences (see also: Luhmann, 1998).
2
In addition to this scientific debate, long-term strategic planners might furthermore be confronted with
the difficulty of changing sensibilities and significance of criminal behavior (e.g. processes of
(de)criminalization) for law enforcement and society (see also: von Lampe 2005).
3
We will however not adopt Beck’s analysis about reflexive modernization but ground our argument in
the governmentality literature on reflexive government (Dean, 1999) and the uptake or account of Beck’s
work in reflexive security studies.
28