Organised crime in Marseilles

Résumé du document

Academic literature on French organised crime is scarce. Very few ? if not any ? criminology departments exist within French universities and higher education institutions. Moreover, public debate is centred on the issues of petty crime and unruly youths, as it was the case during the 2002 presidential election campaign. Organised crime is also presented as a foreign-originated problem , be it from Russian, Chinese, Italian or Columbian origin. However, there exists some evidence to maintain that native organised groups are present in France, especially in its South-Eastern part. For instance, the Mediterranean city of Marseilles has a tradition of organised groups that can be traced back to the 19th century. Since the end of the Second World War, these groups have fought a bloody war for the control of the Marseilles underworld. Recently, a former prominent Marseilles godfather, Jacques Imbert, who was said to be retired, was sentenced to four years in prison for cigarette smuggling, which is for some a minor sentence compared to the investigations in which his name has appeared.

Arguably, the Marseilles ?milieu? is more of a set of groups than an organised and structured group, but studying it as an institution should help to highlight its main features and raise a few questions. Therefore, the approach adopted here uses a neo-institutionalist framework: the Marseilles underworld is studied as an institution, which has its own sets of rules, its power struggles, its opposition between newcomers and groups already in place, as well as its own institutional logic ...

Extraits

[...] cit., p Ibid., pp. 362-363 Ministère de l'intérieur, lutte contre la criminalité organisée”, www.interieur.gouv.fr/rubriques/c/c3_police_nationale/c332_dcpj/La_lutte_con tre_la_criminalitee_organisee Xavier Raufer, Stéphane Quéré, Op. cit., p. [...]

[...] In the thirties, criminal gangs were hired by business owners to intimidate the workforce and to block strikes, as well as to oppose the communists and organize part of the workforce. But from the mid-thirties, organised crime influence within the city began to fade, as communist counter-attacked and as the left won the local elections. However, after the war, unstable conditions helped criminal gangs to reassert their control of the docklands. Criminal groups known as “équipes de choc” gave support to the socialist trade union Force Ouvrière, in its struggle against the communist union Confédération Générale du Travail. [...]

[...] Within these systems, actors do not always behave instrumentally in pursuit of material self-interest, and institutions become embedded in routine. According to the neo- institutionalist theory, political time tends to be characterised by periods of relative stability, punctuated periodically by phases of intense institutional change[2]. For this approach, sets of rules within institutions are seen as reflecting historical experience and as potentially rich in conflict, contradiction and ambiguity, and thus as producing deviation as well as conformity, variability as well as standardization[3]. [...]

[...] The essay will first look at the origins of the Marseilles before turning to analyse its activities. Attention will also be paid to links with other criminal groups, relationships with civil society and politics, as well as to the challenge to democracy that the Marseilles criminal world raises. The conflicts that run trough this underworld will then be examined, which should finally lead to an assessment of its present state. Looking at the origins of the presence of organised crime in the Mediterranean city of Marseilles should explain some of its main current features. [...]

[...] This discussion of the relationship between politics and the underworld leads to the issue of the challenge to democracy that Marseilles organised crime poses. Some authors contend that local criminals are able to take advantage of public contracts for construction or waste collection, thanks to their connections in politics[19]. Criminals would therefore infringe upon the principle of transparent decision-making and receive taxpayers' money. Evidence also exists to show that Marseilles criminals use the city's Northern quarters, which now host particularly vulnerable populations, often from North-African origin, as a recruiting ground. [...]