ABSTRACT
There has always been a very large gulf between governments’ rhetoric about ‘wars on’ or ‘fighting’ organised crime and the reality of what they are actually able to do about it. UK government statements on launching the legislation to bring about the National Crime Agency, like the first one above, show that the rhetoric remains intact but, in order to consider what role is or might be played by intelligence in the ‘fight’ or, indeed, whether such language is simply misleading, it is necessary first to examine key conceptual issues including how ‘organised crime’ is defined. For example, the second quote above, made within days of the first by a member of the same government, also refers to the challenge of complex economic crimes but strikes a very different tone; this is not a ‘fight’ but an attempt to avoid long investigations with uncertain outcomes in return for some combination of plea bargaining, compliance and reform.
