Karin Cornils

Denmark on the Road to Organised Crime

As Denmark is not represented in the first two parts of the project, this article on organised crime policies will try to cover a few aspects from those other parts at the same time. It begins with a discussion of the definition of organised crime and the use of that term (section 2), including details of different manifestations of organised delinquency, in particular the special phenomenon of so-called biker crime. The focus on biker crime is due to the fact that Danish police and politicians consider the biker groups to be the core of organised crime in Denmark. The following sections are devoted to short overviews of recent criminological and other research on organised crime (section 3) and of the organised crime policies developed in the last 20 years (section 4). A more detailed description of legal instruments (section 5) is subdivided into measures of substantive law, of procedural law, and specific measures against bikers and hashish clubs. Finally we deal with special investigative bodies (section 6) and the role of Denmark within the ambit of international judicial cooperation in the field of combating organised crime (section 7).