British Crime Firms

Historically organized crime is a relatively new phenomenon in Britain that was only formally recognized by politicians and law enforcement in the 1980s and 1990s and emerged as a social problem that was heavily associated with transnationality (Hobbs 2013). However, there were precursors to this obsession with ?transnational-organized crime,? which warrant attention, and they were very much home grown and embedded in the class relations and political economy of industrial society. The criminal firm emerged from the cultures of the urban working class as a form of localized organized crime that was central to the economies and cultures of traditional working class communities and were particularly prominent in London among those communities lacking the strict disciplines of industrial life.