Article Structure versus Activity. Policing Organized Crime in Italy and in the UK, Distance and Convergence Anna Sergi à , Ãà Introduction In recent years organized crime has developed into an independent field of study and research, borrow- ing frames, models and theories from criminology, sociology, history, economics, anthropology, and political sciences (Lampe, 2006). Notwithstanding numberless international provisions that in the past 20–30 years have encouraged attention to organized crime matters and called for national and international harmonization, scholarly work, however varied on the subject, has tended to ignore the strictly legal implications and dilemmas. This huge omission affects the way national policing strategies against organized crime are developed and how they relate to each other in international and transnational settings. This article aims to describe how Italian and British legal models for the fight against organized crime are constructed. Different issues in policing strategies largely depend on how organized crime is perceived by the two nations. Notwithstanding the obvious differences, the two countries often face very similar dilemmas, which blur the boundaries between the two strategies adopted. This is, how- ever, encouraging especially in relation with calls for harmonization in judicial cooperation at the European and international levels and it is also de- pendent on influences of external political pres- sures. This article accepts and assumes the different experiences of organized crime in the two countries, but chooses to deal only with poli- cies and legal frameworks without engaging in de- scriptions or analyses of the nature of the phenomena. For this reason, the article chooses not adopt a working definition of organized crime and treating organized crime as a legal category object of specific legislations. Overview and methods This study should be read as a description of pre- liminary results of an exploratory study on the socio-legal identity of organized crime, in line with aims and methods of comparative research in criminal justice therefore seeking to understand the differences and the reasons for legal choices in national systems (Nelken, 2000; Pakes, 2004; Brants, 2011). The article is primarily based on the description of legal strategies implemented by these two countries to fight whatever is perceived as à New York University School of Law, Center for Research in Crime and Justice, New York, United States of America. Ãà Department of Sociology, Centre for Criminology, University of Essex, Colchester, Essex, UK. E-mail: asergi@essex.ac.uk 1 Policing, pp. 1–10 doi:10.1093/police/pat033 ß The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com Policing Advance Access published November 21, 2013 by guest on November 22, 2013 http://policing.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from