Policing Reform Displaced Local Gangsters

The piece argues London’s old‑school crime syndicates faded not just because of drugs and foreign competition, but because the Metropolitan Police professionalized: anti‑corruption 'Ghost Squad' work, centralized informant handling, and recruiting graduates reduced cozy ties with criminals. That broke the old accommodation system and, alongside open borders and new markets, made space for harder transnational crews. — It shows how recruitment and oversight choices inside police forces can restructure criminal ecosystems, implying that institutional design can both suppress domestic corruption and unintentionally cede terrain to globalized crime.