16.7 Conclusion

The concept of organised crime refers to serious group-based offending for material benefit, but it also carries powerful images shaped by media, politics, policing, and racialisation. Students should be cautious about simple explanations. Gangs and organised crime groups are not always stable, uniform, or easy to define. In British Columbia, many contemporary groups are better understood as fluid social networks connected by money, violence, friendship, rivalry, and opportunity (Bouchard & Konarski, 2014; Ouellet et al., 2018; Prowse, 2013).

A Canadian approach must also take colonialism seriously. Law has not only responded to crime; it has also helped produce inequality, criminalisation, and exclusion. Indigenous peoples, immigrant communities, and racialised youth have often been over-policed and stereotyped while also experiencing real harms from violence and exploitation. Holding these realities together is one of the challenges of criminology (Chalas & Grekul, 2017; Ezeonu, 2014; Kohm & Maier, 2023).

The goal of this chapter is not to provide a final answer to what gangs or organised crime “really” are. Rather, it is to give students tools for asking better questions: Who is defining the problem? What evidence is being used? Who is harmed? Who benefits? Which histories are included or excluded? And what responses are most likely to produce safety, justice, and prevention? These questions matter because gang and organised crime definitions have real effects on research, policy, enforcement, public fear, and the lives of people who are labelled through them (Esbensen et al., 2001; Ezeonu, 2014; Magnus et al., 2019; Wiley et al., 2017).