Combating Illegal Immigration & Economic Crime in Spain
Combating Illegal Immigration in Spain
Criminal enterprises engaged in the illegal trafficking of immigrants face administrative penalties. A key strategy involves questioning boat occupants, offering legal residency in exchange for information on the organization and collaboration with Spanish justice. However, prioritizing the return of detained passengers, often to Morocco, can have dire consequences.
Returned individuals may attempt new voyages, facing minimal obstacles to starting a criminal career. This endangers victims and challenges the Spanish legal system due to the lack of enforcement of criminal consequences. The return of occupants, including alleged members of criminal organizations, allows them to undertake new voyages from their country of origin, typically Morocco.
This implies that the subject faces no major obstacles to starting a criminal career in this field, laying the groundwork for further endangering victims and that the Spanish legal system remains challenged by the lack of enforcement of the criminal legal consequences provided for the commission of such events.
Economic Crime: Definition and Characteristics
Economic crimes are offenses committed by individuals of higher socioeconomic status, acting within their profession and abusing the trust inherent in social relations, thereby injuring or endangering the economic order.
Characteristics of Economic Crime
- Economic Situation: Prosperity can lead to specific criminal acts that must be prevented.
- State Intervention: Inadequate internal controls need correction. Thorough accounting, auditing, and periodic audits are essential for prevention.
- Anonymous and Complex Nature: The complexity of economic life can facilitate illicit practices.
- Insufficient Funds: Can lead to fraud.
- The Economic System Itself: Can create opportunities for crime.
- Spiral Effect: Crime can provide an edge over competitors, tempting rivals to imitate.
Psycho-Social Factors
- Motivation in Business: The pursuit of efficiency, profit, power, and productivity can sometimes lead to unethical behavior.
- Perception of White-Collar Crime: Offenders often do not consider their actions as criminal or identify as criminals.
- Victim Awareness: Victims are often unaware of the crime or realize it after a long time, leading to underreporting.
- Public Opinion: Indifference and ambiguous views of economic crimes can lead to them being overlooked and not considered as serious as other forms of illegality. Authors are often seen as intelligent, making detection and prosecution difficult.
- Legal World: Complexity in modus operandi, prior advice to offenders, cultural homogeneity, lengthy processes, difficulties in gathering sufficient evidence, and the potential consequences of sentencing (destruction of companies, unemployment) all contribute to the challenges in addressing economic crime.
Legal Factors
- Vague and diffuse definitions of typical goods or collective legal interests.