Background and goals of the investigation

The purpose of the Office of the Auditor General’s investigation was to assess the police and prosecuting authorities’ efforts to combat organised crime. Organised crime is on the increase and it is now part of the overall crime picture in Norway. It is characterised by professionalism and mobility, and it often has links to other countries. The Storting has stated on several occasions that the battle against organised crime is to be made a priority, both nationally and through international cooperation.

Method

The lines of inquiry in the investigation were pursued through interviews, questionnaire surveys, lists of questions, document analysis and statistics.

Results

The investigation shows that a strategy is lacking for how organised crime should be combated. The authorities have prepared action plans and documents that deal with aspects of organised crime, but they have not altered their priorities to any significant extent.

The investigation also shows that goals and performance requirements for the police’s work against organised crime have not been established to any significant extent through the management dialogue. This affects how the police districts prioritise their efforts against organised crime in relation to other types of crime. Moreover, few statistics are available that shed light on the results of the police’s efforts against organised crime.

A clear majority of the police districts state that operative police cooperation on crime across districts is unsatisfactory. Since the investigation of organised crime is demanding in terms of resources and it is unclear how the costs associated with such cases are to be divided, getting police districts to take responsibility for investigating and trying such cases has been challenging. A number of players are also calling for stronger intelligence and analysis work at the national and regional level, including more strategic analyses, in order to make the efforts against organised crime more targeted and coordinated.

The investigation also shows that there are big differences in the extent to which procedures have been established for cooperation and information flow between the correctional services and the police, both at the operational level (local) and at management level (regional). A majority of the regions in the correctional services and the police districts feel that the exchange of information is unsatisfactory.

It also emerges from the investigation that the police’s ICT systems do little to facilitate the effective combating of crime. Individual police districts’ access to registers and databases in other districts varies. There is also insufficient access to case information in other districts. Registered information is not automatically transferred between different registers and databases, but has to be registered in several places.

The police are entitled to employ a number of methods such as surveillance, covert searches and communications control in their work against organised crime. The methods employed are often decisive in uncovering organised crime. The investigation shows that the police districts report a growing need to use such methods, but that the percentage of completed investigations where such methods were used fell in the period from 2005 to 2008.

The investigation shows that optimal use is not made of international cooperation with police and prosecuting authorities abroad. The police districts’ utilisation of the opportunities this cooperation presents varies, among other things as a result of differences in expertise and experience. However, the statistics suggest that utilisation of such cooperation increased in the period 2005-2008.