Organised Crime and Public Sector Corruption: A Crime Scripts Analysis

This paper considers how organised crime groups may make use of information and communications technologies to induce or to corrupt public officials to disclose information to facilitate further criminal activities. It is argued that the extensive policy initiatives used in recent years to respond to organised crime have created an environment hostile to conventional criminality, and led to organised crime groups seeking out new ways in which to offend and to avoid detection or criminal justice action. Following an analysis of the crime scripts used by organised criminals in relation to the corruption of public servants in Australia, various crime prevention solutions are explored that could be used to respond to these risks based on Ekblom’s (2005) 5Is approach to situational crime prevention.