Serious Crime Act 2015

4. Serious and organised crime includes drug trafficking, human trafficking, organised illegal immigration, child sexual exploitation, high value fraud and other financial crime, counterfeiting, organised acquisitive crime and cyber crime. Organised crime costs the United Kingdom at least £24 billion each year. As at December 2013, there are some 36,600 organised criminals in 5,300 groups currently operating in ways that directly affect the UK(1). In October 2013, the Government published its Serious and Organised Crime Strategy (Cm 8715)(2). The aim of the Strategy is to reduce substantially the level of serious and organised crime affecting the UK and its interests. The strategy has four components: prosecuting and disrupting people engaging in serious and organised crime (Pursue); preventing people from engaging in such activity (Prevent); increasing protection against serious and organised crime (Protect); and reducing the impact of such criminality where it takes place (Prepare). Under the Pursue strand of the strategy, the document set out proposals to:

• Strengthen the operation of the asset recovery process by closing loopholes in the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002;

• Better tackle people who actively support, and benefit from, participating in organised crime;

• Create new powers to seize and detain chemical substances suspected of being used as cutting agents for illegal drugs; and

• Amend the Computer Misuse Act 1990 to update the existing offences to cover importing tools for cyber crime (such as data programmes designed for unlawfully accessing a computer system).

1

National Strategic Assessment of Serious and Organised Crime 2014, National Crime Agency, 1 May 2014 (http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/publications/207-nca-strategic-assessment-of-serious-and-organised-crime/file)

2

http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm87/8715/8715.pdfBack [2]