Organized Crime and Strategic Intelligence: Challenges for the 21st Century

Thiis article seeks to present an introductory panorama of the questions arising from the relation between strategic intelligence and organized crime. Organized crime structures have strategic importance because they have the capacity of deploying their activities in the strategic scenario in opposition to the State. Thus, considering a strategic context with high levels of ambiguity associated with the data, information and knowledge regarding organized crime, the challenge for intelligence resides in understanding how criminal operations or businesses function, how criminals work and choose their victims, how they legitimate their assets and the products of their criminal activities, which are their strengths and, above all, which are the weaknesses of the systems and procedures used by criminal organizations. To achieve this goal big volumes of data and information must be put in context, most of which come from the systematic exploitation of open sources. Only in this way is possible to build a reference frame to elaborate strategic intelligence products adapted to the nature of the security threat that organized crime embodies, in the 21st century.