The end of organised crime in the European Union

So much has been written—and vigorously contested—about 'organised crime' (OC) that the impending fall of this familiar icon may come as a shock, both to its detractors and to those who take it for granted. Yet that moment may be upon us, for reasons that this paper will explore, as the European Union shifts the vocabulary within which policies on police cooperation are articulated. A pivot of this change is the EU Council Decision on Europol, first debated by the Council in late 2006 and anticipated as applying from 2010 onwards. This will shift the scope of Europol's work from 'organised crime' (attributing qualities to criminality) to 'serious crime' (concern with impacts and harms falling on individual and collective victims); will transfer financing of Europol to the Community budget; and so will initiate parliamentary scrutiny. These issues in security governance are explored from 'northern', 'southern' and 'eastern' European perspectives and in the contexts of ongoing enlargement and democratisation of the EU

STS: how come and why not

A proposal to encourage 'simple' secutitisation (bundling and selling on of debt) is before the European Parliament. The proposal, as forwarded by the European Commission and the Council, raises question about the choice of securitisation (debt+complexity) as a ‘post-crisis’ policy instrument. And could Members of the European Parliament explain all this to citizens? (the “What Were You Thinking?” test). Answers depend on one’s preferred cognitive framing. This presentation moves on from the evaluative debate (securitisation is good/bad/it depends), to a historical enquiry into the 'post-crisis' re-emergence of securitisation. Taking an institutionalist approach, it identifies EU public institutions - not the market - as the re-starters of securitisation in Europe

Banking culture and collective responsibility: A memorandum to the UK Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards

Basic assumptions • There is wide interest in connecting issues of (i) occupational culture, (ii) compliance/ misconduct, (iii) remuneration and (iv) clawback (the bonus/malus debate). • Individual-focussed measures (supervision, remuneration and measures in civil or criminal law) must be supplemented by a wider, whole-firm regulatory strategy. • Whilst attention has been drawn to ‘the tone at the top’, ‘the tone in the middle’ and ‘the tone at the bottom’ are as important. Collectively, mid- and lower-level staff see and know more than chief executives or boards. To reform culture, all levels need to be properly incentivised. • In cases of rule-breaking, recklessness or malfeasance, clawing back a proportion of past and/or present remuneration is a matter of economic justice. • However, questions about who to hold (co-)responsible and to target for recoveries need to be more imaginatively addressed than hitherto. Up to now, some of those working in the financial services industry have passively gained from the recklessness and misdemeanours of their peers – for example, through group bonuses – whilst not being at any risk of clawbacks unless they are also are flagrantly involved. All rewards for passive connivance should be withdrawn, indeed reversed. Recommendations • The Commission should recommend collective responsibility, financial accountability and clawbacks – applying laterally to co-workers of miscreants, as well as vertically to management. This would animate the occupational culture, incentivising all levels of banking staff, in a proactive and precautionary manner, to bring informal pressure to bear against reckless or improper practices and, where that fails, to trigger formal investigation, via reporting and whistleblowing. • A forthright approach would be to go for such linked cultural and remuneration reforms across the whole sector. A more tentative and exploratory step would be to use the (partly) publicly-owned banks as a testing ground. An alternative would be to require such reforms selectively, as conditions of settlement with regulators. If monitoring over time finds that the changes seem positive, then that could provide ammunition for wider change across the industry. Future work • Further thought needs to be given to the relationship between occupational culture within banking, and broader shifts of sentiment associated with the business cycle. • The relationship between (a) risk-taking and (b) the implicit public guarantees enjoyed by banks and liquidity support by central banks remains problematic

Regulatory herding versus democratic diversity: history and prospects

Regulatory convergence — within the E.U., across the Atlantic and internationally — is conventionally represented as not only benign but also as essential in crisis prevention. This paper articulates a different frame of reference: one in which regulators “crowd,” “herd” and sometimes merge, so mimicking and exacerbating financial market tendencies toward similarity and contagion, and drawing regulators and markets into the same vortex. The paper looks at some of the historical and contemporary circumstances in the U.K., wider E.U. and the U.S. that have given reign to these tendencies and also at some aspects of regulatory architecture and governance that reduce such tendencies. It mentions pre-crisis tendencies to regulatory subservience to financial markets, with such subservience having a deep history in the U.K. and a shorter one in the U.S.; so-called command regulation, which has the potential to either deepen subservience or transcend it; and the institutional preconditions for permanent regulatory vigilance, such as democratic appointment of heads of agencies. The paper concludes by pondering the prospects for the democratic direction of financial market regulation, in terms of its distributional logics and extraterritoriality

Risk calculation and precautionary uncertainty: two configurations within crime assessment

This paper explores two configurations of thinking about crime amongst law enforcement agencies and private sector security managers: 'risk calculation' (concerned with everyday, calculable probabilities and impacts and their management) and 'precautionary uncertainty' (concerned with events that might be incapacitating, yet are not calculable by probability assessments). The paper explores their respective constituent concepts and fields of application in crime assessment, drawing upon qualitative research-in-progress in Belgium. Risk calculation, as applied to crime, starts with past data on routines that link perpetrators with targets that lack capable guardians. Precautionary uncertainty focuses on potential impacts that are highly disabling and potentially wide-spreading (contagion, knock-on effects), asking how such impacts can be contained and recovered from. Risk and uncertainty are shown to be related to 'rational-instrumental' and 'deliberative-constitutive' approaches as developed by Fisher's work in the field of law, which offers a meta-narrative in relation to which they can be positioned. Finally, the paper asks if these two crime assessment methods should be seen as distinct or as merging. On the basis of criteria of conceptual sharpness, openness to public debate and justiciability, the authors champion the maintenance of a clear distinction between risk and uncertainty

Owner perceptions of their cat's quality of life when treated with a modified University of Wisconsin-Madison protocol for lymphoma

The objectives of this study were to assess owner perceptions of their cat’s quality of life during treatment for lymphoma with a doxorubicin-containing multi-agent chemotherapy protocol, whether various health-related parameters correlated with quality of life scores, and to assess owner satisfaction with the protocol

Saidabad, Pretoria, Sarajevo, The Hague, Brussels: conflicts and cooperation in security and policing

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