International Journal on Criminology Volume 6, Number 2, Winter 2018/Spring 2019 | Page 60

New Maritime Crime: An Introduction
until now, conducted their activities legally. And all this is being met with a deafening
silence.
What is interesting about the maritime world is the wealth of conceptualizations
that it offers, at least once the frameworks of interpretation become clear.
These include concepts such as the hybridizations that are currently being developed
by Jean-François Gayraud, the maritime crime balloon, or quite simply the
fact that it is a driver behind the development of prospective criminal intelligence,
applied within the maritime sector. Of course, over the long term there are constants,
with some hybridizations having already developed in the past. But what
makes these hybridizations different today is that they are all happening at the same
time, and across an immense geographical area. They are also accompanied by the
development of the military component, reminiscent of the mechanisms behind
the previous wave of hybridization between criminal activity and terrorism.
The two main state organizations in France that are working today to tackle
maritime crime, the Gendarmerie Maritime and the Navy (Marine Nationale), the
former being used to carry out the work of the latter, are faced with two significant
challenges. First, they need to develop a strategy of knowledge that enables them
to tackle the dark figure of maritime crime and, behind this, mobilize both private
actors and state actors and partners. Second, they need to develop conceptual tools
and, most importantly, focus as best they can on developing intelligence tools.
Criminal intelligence, necessarily forward-looking and so difficult to implement
in the French context, is a key part of this effort.
Developing a strategy of knowledge involves investing in high-level intellectual
and conceptual technology, which must not be confused with the processing
of big data. The great opportunity that we have here, in state action at sea developed
by the French Navy, is that whatever the national or international policing
dimension, once we are aware of a threat, we have maritime operators that know
how to combat it. Making use of this capacity and of this police and military culture
is a fighting capacity that is itself hybrid, and is therefore perhaps a natural
response to a criminal threat that is in the process of becoming hybrid itself. It is
however very important not to confuse the fight’s policing nature with its military
nature, since even though both use the same means, the professional conduct of
the action remains firmly police-based rather than war-based.
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