International Journal on Criminology Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2018 | Page 46

Criminology, a Precursor to Criminal Law
of the US. The gang is also present and active in Canada, in Mexico, and in
Central America, where it is known as Mara-18.
Its closest rival, the Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13, established at the
end of the 1970s also in Los Angeles, is today of equal standing; and is its
sworn enemy everywhere. The 18 th Street gang’s level of aggression and
violence are such that in the autumn of 2006, a specific operational group
was formed within the FBI, the first break with the “terrorism alone” mission
of the bureau since 2001: a few agents for the whole country!
• Increasing levels of trafficking: On December 10, 2015 at 6:30 pm, French
authorities boarded the cargo ship Carib Palm on the high seas. It was sailing
under the Moldovan flag, and its twelve crew members were Turkish
and Ukrainian. The ship had left Colombia and was en route to Gdansk in
Poland. Upon its arrival at the dockside at Boulogne-sur-Mer, the custom
officials seized at least 2.4 tons of cocaine hidden behind a metal partition
on the ship; a record in metropolitan France.
• Criminal activities developing in prisons: One of the most powerful criminal
groups in Brazil, involved in the large-scale trafficking of cocaine, the First
Command of the Capital (Primeiro Comando da Capital, PCC for short),
was established from within the country’s prison system in 1993, with its
successive leaders running it from jail. In February 2001, it triggered a simultaneous
riot in around thirty prison establishments and paralyzed the
country for forty-eight hours. In May 2006, from their cells, through the
use of cell phones, the leaders of the PCC launched around three hundred
simultaneous attacks against public buildings and police stations in
São Paulo, causing the deaths of 134 people. Over several days, the level of
tension in the region was close to that of a civil war. This operation was celebrated
in the streets with jubilation, with drugs being handed out for free.
In Italy, it took the unlikely alliance of the authorities and the Camorra
to bring an end to the activities of a powerful prison criminal organization,
the Nuova Camorra Organizzata, which dominated almost all the prisons
of the country and which killed its enemies with impunity there.
The muteness of the French prison administration struggles to conceal
the reality of prison criminality, whose motivations and mechanics the
film A Prophet, 6 which was criticized for failing to present the real facts,
nevertheless exposes perfectly.
• Diminished territories that protect criminals: Lastly, in the heart of the subtropical
forest of South America, there is a gray zone that shelters all of the
world’s criminal activities—mafias as well as terrorist entities. This is called
the Triple Frontier, and is a haven that allows criminals, geographically,
6 By Jacques Audiard, 2009.
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