Organized Crime and National Security in Spain:

Challenges and Responses

Edited by Andrés de Castro

This book offers an analysis of how organized crime operates in Spain and the security apparatus designed to contain it. Organized crime is currently one of the most serious security threats facing democratic societies. Despite its intense presence and the responses that states have articulated in recent decades, little attention has been paid to the measurement of the effectiveness of the means adopted to combat it. Thus, this volume delves into this issue and performs an analysis of the police dimension of the response to organized crime in Spain. Firstly, this volume describes the international phenomenon of organized crime and its evolution in Spain, and continues by analyzing the profile and the characteristics of the different police forces and their resources and capabilities. This book then discusses the consequences of the measures at international level, European Union level, and local level, in relation to other police forces. Finally, the volume addresses the legal and public policy efforts that Spanish Law Enforcement Agencies have made in supervising or regulating their own police forces, which is necessary to carry out a detailed analysis of the consequences on the presence and strength of organized crime in the structures, strategies and decisions that Spain adopted over the last decades. As a result, this book builds on and updates the previous work by international scholars and proposes an interesting methodology that can contribute to the advancement of security studies.

London; New York: Routledge, 2025. 265p.

By Stephen Merchant, Greg Wilson

In 2023 the Government commissioned a ‘first principles’ independent review of the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) and associated Commonwealth law enforcement arrangements.

The review assessed the effectiveness of the ACIC’s legislative framework and found that comprehensive reform was needed to ensure ACIC could operate effectively as Australia’s national criminal intelligence agency. The review recommended ACIC shift away from its existing law enforcement and investigative functions towards providing unique intelligence on serious and organised crime to Commonwealth, state and territory law enforcement agencies.

The independent review’s recommendations set out a blueprint to transform the ACIC in response to the significant and ongoing threat of serious and organised crime. The Government has agreed or agreed in-principle with 27 of the 29 recommendations - as set out in the government response.

Key recommendations

• Undertake robust legislative reforms to address significant deficiencies in the existing legislative frameworks and ensure the ACIC has appropriate powers for the collection of intelligence.

• Incorporate appropriate oversight and safeguards for the ACIC, including in relation to its use of coercive powers.

• Reinvigorate national governance and coordination arrangements for responding to serious and organised crime.

• Reinforce the independence of the Australian Institute of Criminology.

BARTON, ACT : Attorney-General's Department (Australia), 2024. 68p.

By Nikita Lalwani

For much of the twentieth century, the United States did little to help repatriate looted antiquities, thanks to a powerful coalition of art collectors, museums, and numismatists who preferred an unregulated art market. Today, however, the country treats the protection of cultural property as an important national-security issue. What changed? This Essay tells the story of how a confluence of events—including the high-profile destruction and looting of cultural property in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the revelation that looted antiquities were helping to bankroll terrorist organizations in the Middle East—convinced both Congress and the State Department to take the issue seriously. It then asks what this shift says about how the United States sets its policy agenda and reflects on how cultural property law should evolve from here.

Yale Law Journal, VOLUME 130, 2020-2021