Individual Criminal Liability Within Organized Crime Structures

Abstract

The distribution of functions within organized crime structures makes it difficult to determine the criminal responsibility of leaders, coordinators, intermediaries, and material perpetrators, particularly when decisions, information, and resources circulate across different organizational levels without a direct relationship between those who plan and those who execute the offence. This article aims to analyse the requirements for attributing criminal responsibility to each member without turning group membership, hierarchical position, or functional connection into automatic grounds for culpability. The research adopts a qualitative approach and a legal-dogmatic, documentary, hermeneutic, and comparative design, supplemented by criminological studies on the internal configuration of hierarchical, decentralized, and hybrid organizations. The analysis examines the relationship between organizational structure, effective power, modes of perpetration and participation, the involvement of leaders and middle-ranking members, knowledge of the criminal programme, and the autonomy of the material perpetrator. The findings indicate that criminal attribution must distinguish the existence of the organization, the function actually performed, participation in the decision-making process, and the specific connection between the accused’s conduct and the offence committed. A progressive attribution sequence is proposed, comprising the organization’s configuration, the member’s effective position, involvement in the criminal process, knowledge of the offence, and the specific connection with the result produced. It is concluded that the legitimate prosecution of organized crime requires moving beyond presumptions based on rank or membership and individually reconstructing each member’s objective and subjective contribution.