Belgian crime fighters pay a lot of attention to what is called “itinerant crime groups”: criminal gangs, mainly from Eastern European origin, who are specialized in systematically committing all sorts of property crimes, ranging from burglaries and robberies to ram raids and metal thefts. Criminal statistics indicate that Eastern European property offenders in Belgium do indeed seem to commit more offences on average and tend to travel further in their criminal activity. Yet, this does not answer many questions. On the contrary, it only indicates that these groups are worth studying. A qualitative study of 27 case files reveals information on various features of these crime groups. Two characteristics are discussed, being those two that make up the name used to capture this phenomenon. The use of terms mentions ‘crime groups’ reflecting at least some sort of basic organization. A first question dealt with is how these groups are structured. Are these groups indeed organized and is there a reason for not considering them criminal organizations? Alongside the degrees of organization, we wonder whether organizational levels do lead to the involvement in more, less or different forms of criminal behavior.
A second, perhaps even more important question, is how these groups’ mobility should be perceived. This questions deserves particular attention because it is this feature which makes these groups special in the first place: their criminal operations cover large areas and one hypothesis is that this is related to their lack of fixed residence in our region. The focus lies therefore on the starting point of the crime trips in order to find out whether higher mobility is actually part of their criminal operations or an artifact in crime statistics, due to higher mobility outside criminality. Additionally, the local and transnational connections are addressed, particularly by looking at the location of the criminal fence.
The results indicate two main points. First, itinerant crime groups can show various degrees of organizations, ranging from short-term operations between limited numbers of offenders to long-term, well-structured and hierarchical groups, their involvement in crimes evolving accordingly. Second, their itinerancy is not as straightforward as often assumed. Although there are certain degrees of mobility – within and outside the criminal operations – this least of all means that these groups have no local anchor points or connections at all
