It was never about the money' : market society, organised crime and UK criminology

Although occasionally perceived by the British police as a problem experienced in a few cities (Levi 2005: 825), and resulting in a range of essentially local solutions, based on specialised local knowledge (Sillitoe 1955), historically organised crime is hard to locate in either political or academic discourse in the U.K. However, specific illegal pleasures and various forms of vice did trigger a racial pathology locating certain ethnic groups as being culpable for the corruption and degradation of white British society (Hobbs 2012; Knepper 2007). Indeed images of collaborations of foreign criminals imposing themselves upon the UK were especially alarming ('Slater 2007), as 'alien conspiracy theory' settled at the foundations of what was to become the UK's policy on organised crime.