Understanding, Definition and Sanctioning of Organized Crime Under the Law of Republic of Kosovo

The presence and development of criminality in society dates back from the old ages to the present time, by transforming itself in various types of emergence, depending on the degree of social emancipation. In addition to social development processes, there are also changes from the viewpoint of ideas relating to the etymology of crime in society. In the beginning of XX century, the society dealt with drastic and dramatic changes in the whole domains of life, accompanied with changes in the form of occurrence of criminality in society. The term “organized crime†was originally used in 1896 in the annual report of Society for for the Crime Prevention in New York. In this report, the term was employed to define the acts of prostitution and gambling, protected by the public officers. Whereas, as far as Kosovo is concerned, the International Administration - UNMIK - promulgated the Regulation No. 2001/22 “On Measures against Organized Crime†. The Regulation No. 2001/22 provides the definition of the term organized crime where it sets forth the measures and penalties that may be imposed to participants of an organized crime, the basic and qualified forms. With the purpose of supplementing the legal grounds to combat and prevent the criminality in the country, the Kosovo Assembly promulgated on 6th July 2003 the “Provisional Criminal Code of Kosovo†[1] Provisional Criminal Code of Kosovo, Kosovo Assembly, Prishtina, 2003, which entered into force on 20th April 2004