Inside the Scottish Crime Campus and the next big threat

Eighteen organisations are represented on the Serious Organised Crime Taskforce bringing together experts leading Scotland's Serious Organised Crime Strategy which covers divert, deter, detect and disrupt.

Here, the lead for each area highlights the work being carried out at the campus, the steps taken over the last ten years and the challenges they face.

Disrupt lead: Kenny Donnelly, Deputy Crown Agent for Serious Casework at the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.

In "The Untouchables," federal agent Eliot Ness said, "Never stop fighting till the fight is done." This line captures the relentless and critical collaboration between prosecutors and law enforcement agencies as they tackle Serious Organised Crime.  

The cinematic world of Ness and his team is far from today’s reality, but modern-day prosecutors and justice partners work tirelessly, combining their skills and resources, to dismantle criminal networks and bring justice to those who believe they are untouchable. 

In the last decade, our team of skilled and specialist prosecutors at the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) have operated in lockstep alongside justice partners, including Police Scotland, the National Crime Agency and HMRC, within the umbrella of the Scottish Crime Campus to share tactics and information which allows us to turn intelligence into evidence. 

Prosecuting crime is our business and COPFS has a healthy balance sheet of exposing individuals whose Serious Organised Crime activities have blighted communities and inflicted untold harm on the lives of thousands of ordinary families.  

In the last five years, for example, a total of 952 serious organised crime gang members have been incarcerated and removed from the streets of Scotland, some of them having tried – and failed - to evade justice by fleeing overseas. 

Notable among them was James White, who headed up one of Scotland's most notorious organised crime groups and was arrested in Brazil in June 2020 before being extradited back to Scotland and sentenced to nine years and 10 months in prison last year. 

Another serious organised gang leader who believed he was safe from Scottish justice was Christopher Hughes, jailed for life last year following the murder of a man in the Netherlands. 

Pivotal to their convictions was the collaboration we had with French authorities, who had breached an encrypted messaging platform and shared that intelligence with partners across Europe. What was once impenetrable telephony now allowed us to target a substantial number of additional individuals who had been operating under the radar. 

However, the last ten years have also thrown up fresh challenges to prosecutors as Serious Organised Crime gangs develop sophisticated new methods of buying and selling controlled drugs, trafficking people, laundering money, and using cryptocurrency to mask their criminality. 

So, while we are rightly proud of our accomplishments in disrupting Serious Organised Crime over the last decade, no one is complacent.

We will continue to work on developing strategies that enable us to tackle Serious Organised Crime, knowing that Eliot Ness’s mantra can continue to act as a clarion call from within the corridors of the Scottish Crime Campus. 

Detect Strand: Assistant Chief Constable Andy Freeburn, Police Scotland and chair of the Scottish Crime Campus Multi-Agency Tasking and Delivery Board 

The campus ensures that over 100 operations and 1,400 individual criminals are being investigated at any one time. We have been highly successful in this endeavour and in the last year alone have seized around £20m of cocaine, £3m of heroin and £6m of cannabis. 

Read more: The history and success of the Scottish Crime Campus

The threats to Scotland are much wider than drugs and we work collectively against a range of harms including human trafficking, child abuse and sexual exploitation, serious fraud and cybercrime. 

Criminals do not recognise borders and we rely upon partners such as the NCA, FBI and Interpol, to ensure that no matter where you are in the world, if you commit serious and organised crime in Scotland, we will track you down.  

Divert: Paul Carberry, Chief Executive Action for Children and chair of Serious Organised Crime Taskforce Divert strand. 

My responsibility lies with the strand of work to divert individuals away from becoming involved – or more heavily involved - in SOC and its devasting effects.  

From inter-agency information sharing to better informed prosecutions, and a much deeper understanding of what’s driving or making people vulnerable to involvement in serious organised crime, we’ve learned a lot in the past 10 years.  

One such area of learning has been on criminal exploitation of children, which is a complex type of child abuse where a young person is manipulated or pressured to take part in criminal activity.  

In these cases – where young people are often exploited by adult criminals – the challenge for crime agencies is gathering intelligence to ensure accurate prosecutions of the exploiters, and create ways of working with local authorities who share a responsibility to safeguard victims of exploitation and not simply arrest them.  

Last year the taskforce worked with several agencies to develop new guidance on identifying criminal exploitation of children and what professionals working with young people can do to help tackle it.    

This month members of the taskforce’s divert strand are organising an awareness raising event with professionals across social work, education, local authorities and policy makers specifically focused on the criminal exploitation of children to drive a stronger understanding.  

Throughout my career working in the third sector and with partners tackling the criminal exploitation of children, I’m often reminded of the acute and devastating harm serious organised crime has on the lives of children, young people and families.  

While that remains a hard truth, the many signs of progress over the last decade and our renewed collective determination for action give me hope over the next 10 years it can be different.  

Deter: Amanda Hatton, Scotland's Series Organised Crime Taskforce

Organised crime manifests in many forms and the Deter Strand has a significant focus on tackling the threats posed by crime groups in areas including cybercrime, money laundering, illegal waste disposal, human trafficking and fraud prevention.  

We provide support to businesses, government bodies, and public and voluntary sector organisations to reduce the harm caused by serious organised crime in areas such as licensing, regulation, enforcement and procurement. We work together with a wide range of agencies to ensure businesses and the public sector are aware of emerging threats and what action should be taken to become more resilient. 

It is crucial to be aware of the threat from serious organised crime, report it and take all appropriate steps to mitigate the risks it poses. We must cut off what it needs to thrive and survive – people, money, information, access to contracts and licences. It’s not victimless and we can all suffer from its impact.  

These groups will attempt to infiltrate any target they can make money from. That may involve money laundering, people trafficking, counterfeit goods, cybercrime or trying to obtain high value public sector contracts. Organised crime is a real and present danger in many communities and business sectors. 

Criminals will exploit any opportunity to fraudulently obtain money, power or control by exploiting vulnerabilities. By ensuring organisations are aware of the risks, they can put mitigation measures in place to protect their business, their staff and their reputation. 

Recent successes from the Deter strand include SEPA's multi-agency efforts to disrupt illegal waste activities, clearing non-compliant sites and issuing penalties. HMRC seizing plant machines running illegally on red diesel and Scottish Power Networks disconnecting illegal electricity supplies.  

Our Banking Protocol initiative has also helped to prevent an estimated £29 million in fraud losses and the work of the Cyber and Fraud Centre has supported organisations through 400+ incident response calls and seen the creation of a fraud threat sharing working group that joins up all the major financial institutions in Scotland, along with Police Scotland and Scottish Government.  

These partnerships with financial institutions have proven invaluable in tracing illicit money flows and depriving criminals of their ill-gotten gains.  

By bringing together different agencies under one roof, the Scottish Crime Campus has created a culture of cooperation that is vital in confronting the many complex challenges posed by organised crime.