Police are now battling against 7,500 organised crime gangs after the number increased eight fold in just a decade, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
Organised crime syndicates, such as drug cartels and people-trafficking rings, generate an estimated $1 trillion a year in profits around the world
The criminal enterprises cost the country more than £100 million a day in crime and lost revenues and involve more than 30,000 offenders.
Mass immigration and the explosion of cyber crime are among the driving forces for the growing problem.
Writing for this newspaper, Home Office minister Jeremy Browne said the figures show why the new National Crime Agency (NCA), which will be formally launched later this year, is needed.
But a leading chief constable said the Government must back up its tough rhetoric with funding and called for dedicated funding to tackle organised crime.
Mr Browne, the crime prevention minister, said: “International crime is big business. Gun smuggling, money laundering and people trafficking all operate across borders.
“Large-scale crime needs a parity of resilience. We cannot allow organised criminal networks to be better organised than the crime-fighting authorities which are meant to thwart them.”
Police agencies and the Home Office estimated there are 7,500 organised crime gangs operating in the UK – up from 6,000 in 2010.
In 2001, the then National Criminal Intelligence Service estimated there was between 800 and 900 such gangs operating.
[…]
