Systems Thinking and Intelligence Led Policing - Part 4

How does China and India affect our street crime? In the past decade, theft of copper skyrocketed in just about every police jurisdiction.(The article Red Gold Rush: The Copper Theft Epidemic will give those of you who are new to this subject an overview.) The rising costs of commodities such as copper, a rise according to experts based primarily on the industrial and domestic growth of China and India, influences street crime all over the world. Addicts commit copper theft for the quick cash needed for their next high, and, as copper prices rise, steal the metal to get more money for more drugs. We see telephone wires stripped, air conditioners stolen for the copper inside them, copper pipes stolen from homes, and on and on. Some low-level thieves disrupt power to many by stealing metal from transformers, disrupt transportation systems by stealing from railways, and affect the functioning of the critical infrastructure in their quest for cash for the next high. Organized crime learns that they can capitalize on the rising prices and increase their profit by stealing copper. The web of crime created from the growth of nations becomes more complex and difficult for us to address. China and India are each systems. The economy is a system and crime is a subsystem of that system. Copper is a system as well as a subsystem of the economy. "Minor" theft may affect major systems, such as communications, power and transportation.

In the 1999 BBC new article The third horseman: Organised crime states that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which was an event celebrated by all of us, a "new brand of organised transnational crime, observable from Johannesburg to Prague, and from Lagos to Macau" emerged. The Council of Europe states:

"Economic barriers came down too rapidly and major upheavals followed the fall of the Berlin Wall. European countries viewed this sudden new pace of change with fascination but put off measures to deal with the adverse effects. In the last few years though they have started to respond. Combating organised crime is now one of the Council of Europe's priorities.

The International Monetary Fund puts the profits earned each year from illegal operations at some 500 billion dollars. In other words, about 2% of global GDP! Drug and arms trafficking feature among the most lucrative criminal activities. But transnational crime organisations (TCOs) have become highly diversified."

The organized crime that has sprouted as a direct result of a positive political change - the defeat of communism and the end of the Cold War - is an unintended consequence.

In systems thinking we consider how complex systems interact. For intelligence led policing to grow into what it can be, incorporating systems thinking to develop strategies, such as preparing for unintended consequences of the events in systems outside of policing, is crucial. It is possible to become proactive by looking outside our discipline to the larger world, to study the past implications of market and political influences on crime (as well as influences from other systems), and prepare ourselves in policing, even and perhaps especially at the street level, for the next, currently unknown threats. In that way we will struggle less in trying to catch up with the criminals. We should not be surprised at crime, when the indicators are clear that changes across the world can affect us in our hometowns. This is our reality.