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Organised Crime

Definition

A structured group of three or more persons that operates continuously, with the aim of committing serious offences for material benefit, and that maintains its position through violence, corruption, or intimidation. The UN Palermo Convention (2000) provides the most widely used international definition.

Related terms

BNS 2023
Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023, Act 45 of 2023. India's substantive criminal code with effect from 1 July 2024. Contains 358 sections in...
BNSS 2023
Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita 2023, the statute that replaced the Code of Criminal Procedure. It introduced a mandatory forensic-scene-visit requirement for offences...
BSA 2023
Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023: the Indian evidence statute that replaced the Indian Evidence Act 1872 on 1 July 2024; retains the section...
Corporate Crime
Illegal acts committed by or on behalf of a corporate organisation for the organisation's benefit. Distinct from occupational crime because the wrongdoing...
Culpable Homicide
BNS Section 100. The genus offence; murder under Section 101 is the species when one of four enumerated conditions is met.
Cybercrime
Offences where a computer network is the tool or the target. Tool-based cybercrime includes fraud, harassment, and intellectual property theft conducted online....
Enterprise Theory
A theoretical framework that analyses organised crime as a rational business enterprise responding to market conditions. Associated with criminologist Dwight Smith, who...
Inchoate Offences
Offences punished even though the principal harm did not occur: abetment (Sec 45-50), criminal conspiracy (Sec 61), attempt (Sec 62).
Neutralisation Techniques
The vocabulary of justifications identified by Sykes and Matza (1957) by which offenders deny the wrongfulness of their acts: denial of injury,...
White-Collar Crime
Crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of their occupation (Sutherland, 1939). The category covers...

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