FBI-style agency to 'make life hell' for UK's most wanted gangs

Chesley Smith

SOC 202-02

Current Event #3



Copyright 2006 Guardian Newspapers Limited
The Guardian (London) - Final Edition (page 4)


April 4, 2006 Tuesday

?FBI-style agency to 'make life hell' for UK's most wanted gangs: Blair launches Soca to smash global crime cartels: Police, immigration and customs join forces?

By: Rosie Cowan



The British FBI has targeted 1,000 most wanted organized gangs. The Prime Minister of Serious and Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) plans to ?make life hell? for criminals. The SOCA is the countries first organization to include the police, customs and immigration officers in the fight against crime. Mr. Blair wants to bring back the basic liberties to the people, for the citizens to be freed from crime. SOCA is about 40 countries strong with up to 140 staff members. Each SOCA section is going to working together to find the weaknesses in fighting the organized crime around the globe.

The idea of the world coming together to fight crime as a whole, sounds like a brilliant plan to me. Having other involved fighting for the same goal is much more efficient than one person against the world. Crimes are often committed between country lines; so having a coalition world wide will help stop these types of crimes. The task of battling organized will be something that will not go away over night; this will take many years. The leaders of the SOCA sound very determined to stop these crimes and will do everything in their power to stop organized crime. I see great hope for the future, hopefully for the next generation; the crime rate will be considerable lower. The next generation will be having less need to commit crimes. Many people go through life not being caught for their crimes which will hopefully cease; more law enforcement is aware of the crimes and is out trying to catch the guilty parties. There have been major leads so far with the development of SOCA; people have been seriously investigating crimes that had to be overlooked due to a previously small staff. I am feeling very hopefully for world crime, I imagine the number of crimes to drop considerable over the next few years.