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25 Trends Org. Crime 1 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/trndorgc25 and id is 1 raw text is: Trends in Organized Crime (2022) 25:1-7 https:I/doi.org/l0.1007/si2117-022-09445-2 The processes, logics and economies of violence in organised crime Justin Kotzd& - Georgios A. Antonopoulos2 - Mohammed Rahman3 Accepted: 6 January 2022 / Published online: 10 January 2022 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2022 Abstract This paper provides an introduction to the articles that comprise this special issue on violence and organised crime. Bringing together research into money launder- ing, local elections, state interventions and interrelated processes, firearms and home robberies, enforcers and contract killings, this issue explores the relationship between violence and various facets of organised crime. Taken together, the articles offer empirical and theoretical insights into the processes, logics and economies of violence. In doing so, this issue both advances our current understanding of the role violence plays in organised crime and raises additional questions about the context within which violence is employed, thereby highlighting further avenues for future research. Keywords Contract killing - Enforcement - Robbery - Organised crime - Violence Violence, particularly its specialised use, is often considered a signifier of organised criminal activity (Hobbs 2013; Massari 2019). It has come to be regarded as a major characteristic feature of Organised Crime Groups (OCG), constituting a necessary resource that they cannot do without (Hobbs 2013; Rahman 2019; Sciarrone 2019). Defining violence is a difficult endeavour (Marsh 2020), perhaps because it can be just as diverse as its actors (Wieviorka 2009: 163). If, therefore, we take the actors of violence as our initial point of departure, then we can at least sketch out a rudi- mentary picture of the form and function of violence in organised crime. From the outset it is worth acknowledging that violence takes many forms; it can be a physical act, it can be embodied in language and speech forms, it can even be E Justin Kotz6 j.kotze@tees.ac.uk School of Social Sciences, Humanities & Law, Teesside University, Middlesbrough TS1 3BA, UK 2 Department of Social Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle NEl 8ST, UK 3 School of Social Sciences, Birmingham City University, Birmingham B4 7BD, UK I_) Springer