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CONTAINING SUBVERSION

Fighting Crime Through

Strategic Framework Design

Location: Delft, Rotterdam

Client: Ministry of Justice & Safety, NL

Collaborators: Sjoeke Suilen, Stan Zwanenburg, Wouter Van Dam, Jelle Schilperoord

This consulting project, commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Safety, aimed to counter organised crime and subversion in critical sectors such as the Rotterdam port. Through a meticulous double-diamond approach, we worked with stakeholders across law enforcement, customs, ports, and private enterprises to develop "The PRISM" (Public-Private Risk and Innovation Sharing Mechanism).

This dynamic framework streamlines the identification, analysis, and resolution of systemic vulnerabilities by integrating agile cycles involving sensing, understanding, solving, and implementing innovative solutions. Key deliverables included the PRISM Framework, an implementation roadmap, a digital Stakeholder Map Monitoring System (SMMS) and possible stakeholders of Public Partner Relationships (PPP).​

The vision, "Safeguarding 'the vehicles' from subversion," shifts focus from reactive enforcement to proactive crime prevention, fostering innovation in the fight against organized crime.

Research Question:

How can we (the ministry) identify impactful interventions, strategic collaboration opportunities and joint innovation priorities that go beyond the remit of what individual stakeholders tackle on their own?

Design goals:

Goal 1: Create an understanding of the whole system in which the design challenge is situated.

Goal 2: Design a tangible intervention(s) to simulate public-private innovation/collaboration with the investment counter in mind.

Design approach:

The team conducted design iterations using a double-diamond circular approach. There was continuous problem-solution assimilation as the frame evolved with additional information from interviews and feedback on concepts from design coaches and field stakeholders. Ultimately, this results in a framework for effectively making public-private partnerships.

innovation framework

Discover

To manage the complexity of the project and get access to diverse perspectives, it was decided to qualitatively interview a select number of experts to get a more comprehensive understanding of Subversion. A combination of snowball and convenience sampling was used to strike a balance between depth and efficiency due to the time constraints of the project and the limited availability of interviewees. The results of the Interviews can be read in the following table, and next to that, a literature review was conducted. This research aimed to get a broader background on subversion in the Netherlands and tried to tie the insights from the interviews together.

Source
Insight
Expert Innovation Team specialized in Subversion Scheveningen
Speedbumps highlighted in the current subversion-countering system: AVG, WPG, and implementation time hurdles. The notion of preventing crime is to remove "the vehicles" (used for committing the crime).
Sailor large shipping company
Shipping companies' operational insights of subversion. Highlighted opportunities in the creation of journey maps.
Team Market (Dir. X)
Use of ministry's language; preference for stepwise implementable programs; presenting visually to draw attention within the ministry.
Policy officer Directorate general Punishment and Protection
Introduced the team to the "preventie met gezag" project.
Team Strategy (Dir. X)
Stated ministry employees are averse to having more meetings; explained difficulties in changing the ministry's organization.
Undermining department employee
Created short-term solutions while noting long-term strategies are difficult due to changing government policies. Highlighted the importance of identifying underlying reasons for subversive crimes.
Mobility advisor municipality and port
Process of releasing tenders by the Dutch government using TenderNed.
Literature Review (Staring et al., 2023)
Reactive methods dominate the fight against subversive crime, often involving surveillance. Increased surveillance at locations like Rotterdam harbor reduces efficiency and shifts crime elsewhere.
Literature Review (Anwar et al., 2018)
Standardization and transparency in selecting PPPs are crucial to success. Establishing a central PPP knowledge center relies on teamwork.

Define

Using the insights gathered through the literature research and interviews, we could shed light on the causal underlying problems hidden underneath the overarching phenomenon of undermining. This led to the following:

  • Information sharing and communication between stakeholders are highly restricted due to the ministry's structure, AVG, WPG and general willingness to cooperate(Kevalki, 2021).

  • Creating controlling solutions hampers the efficiency of the harbour, harming certain stakeholders by driving away business. Creating one controlling(safe) harbour drives criminality and business to another, shifting the problem, not solving it. This is referred to as the “Waterbed Effect”(Interviews, 2023) and Van De Poel (2020).

  • Criminals can adapt much easier to the situation, have access to monetary resources and work quickly and dirty as opposed to the ministry; this makes focused, single-faceted solutions less desirable as they would be circumvented by criminals and become obsolete quickly(Interviews, 2023).

  • Low-level criminal individuals are expendable and easily replaced, and focusing on high-level criminals takes a lot of time and resources, making arrests unviable(Interviews, 2023).

 

Based on the insights and ideation, we formulated the vision of the project as "Safeguarding the ‘Vehicles’ from subversion". This vision shifts crime-tackling strategies from their current reactive form to a proactive process. Additionally, to concur with the identified underlying problems and value tensions, a solution space was crafted to create a reproducible method that could evolve and adapt to the changing landscape of subversion. Such a solution would be preferable over a single-moment solution that might quickly become obsolete due to criminal innovation.

Vision

Develop

An initial version of the aforementioned reproducible method (shown below) was presented to the client during the mid-client presentation. An initial version of the aforementioned reproducible method was presented to the client during the mid-client presentation. The Framework consists of five steps involving different stakeholders working together, eventually leading to an innovative PPP that would help solve a given problem/struggle surrounding subversion:

  1. Companies using the port: Any company using the port of Rotterdam to store or move containers will have to offer a supply chain map to obtain a kind of ‘Legal trade’ certification.

  2. Directorate X + LIEC: Through a collaboration with LIEC, an information and expertise centre supporting partners in tackling organised crime, these supply chain maps are turned into a system map.

  3. Directorate X + LIEC + Undermining: These three stakeholders combine to identify potential weaknesses and interaction points where the system is vulnerable to subversive and organised crime.

  4. SMMS: The Stakeholder Map Monitoring System (SMMS) then takes these interaction points as input and provides possible private companies that can offer innovative solutions as output (view section Prototype).

  5. Directorate X: As a final step, these found private companies will be verified and filtered down by directorate X. The remaining companies will be provided with tenders.

​​​

After presenting this version of the framework to the client, we received feedback on some aspects of the method. Using this input, a new iteration of the framework could be crafted, keeping some of the positive points of the original idea but mending/changing some of the aspects the client indicated would not work. These strengths and weaknesses were:

  • The client confirmed the correctness of the stated value tensions and liked the surrounding solution space.

  • The vision was seen as exciting and showed potential for promising results.

  • The idea of grating certification was legally unfeasible, and an alternative incentive should be considered.

  • Directorate X is very limited in personnel and resources, and their level of involvement should thus be lowered.

  • The implementation time should be shortened; they seek a ready-to-go solution.

Companies Using the Port

Offer thier supply chain maps to Directorate X (MJ&S) to obtain certification.

Directorate X + LIEC

combine these supply chain maps into a systems map

Supply chain maps

Directorate X + LIEC + Undermining

identifies the "interaction points" from the system map.

SMMS (Stakeholder Map Monitoring System)

analyses and suggests potential Private Partners for collaboration

System maps

Iteraction points

Directorate X

Verifies the Private Partners and releases tenders

Potential Private Partners

Deliver

Considering the received feedback, the PRISM (Public-Private Risk and Innovation Sharing Mechanism) was created to incorporate detailed cycles, as shown in Figure. Through this framework, every solution is implemented through an appropriate PPP collaboration. The green cycle represents the authorities and their partners, while the red cycle represents criminal organisations; this way, the method considers the innovative capabilities of organised crime and offers continuous responses.

Framework

Sense

The first stage of the method is ‘Sense’, here a given problem surrounding subversion is identified. This can happen in various ways, either an increasing trend in criminality is observed by partners at the police or customs, large arrests shedding light on new issues are made or a person/company that has been blackmailed or subversed comes forward. Such an identified problem is then passed on to partnering knowledge institutes for the next step in the method.

 

Understand

Within ‘Understand’, the provided data on the identified problem is further investigated by experts at TNO and Rantzee. This is done through methods such as ‘crime-scripting' for in-depth analysis. Finally, key insights on involved ‘vehicles’ within the problem are gathered, and keywords surrounding the given problem, crime operation and vehicles are drafted and passed on for the next step of the method.

​

Solve

‘Solve’ is the stage of the method where innovative PPPs are identified and selected; through these PPPs, solutions are codesigned. An overview of the ‘Solve’ cycle can be seen in this image. In the first step, the provided keywords from the ‘Understand’ phase are entered in Tracxn to identify possible PPPs. Afterwards, tenders are drafted and posted on TenderNed in collaboration with different departments of the Ministry. Based on these tenders, the best-identified PPPs are selected. Once selected, these PPPs, with other involved stakeholders, codesign actual solutions. The solutions are evaluated by authorities, and based upon the results of this evaluation, the concept is either approved and moves to the next step in the method, or the agile ‘Solve’ cycle repeats until an approved solution is found.

​

Implement

After a codesigned solution has been approved, the stakeholders required for implementation are gathered and briefed. Together these stakeholders look for and identify any possible bottlenecks for implementation and address these.

 

Learn

In the final step of the cycle, ‘Learn’ covering the ‘Solve’ and ‘Understand’ parts, any found PPP and its accompanying solution is entered in the SMMS (more on this in the section Prototype). This allows for PRISM to continuously save and learn from previous iterations of the cycle. Now, when a problem is investigated during the ‘Understand’ phase, any previously executed cycles leading to comparable and alike results are immediately found, speeding the process and allowing stakeholders to use precedence to argument codesigned solutions.

In the future, stakeholders within the ‘Sense’ and ‘Implement’ would obtain clearance to make use of the SMMS to optimize the process even further.

Expert Evaluation

We consulted different stakeholders to evaluate each step of the framework. For the Solve section, we contacted the police and customs to understand their challenges and methods in crime solving. For the Understand section, we reviewed the framework with senior TNO executives (who also had work experience at LIEC) and are involved in the RANTZEE initiative. They expressed their interest in the PRISM framework, especially the use of LLMs (Large Language Models) in the Learn cycle to accelerate the crime solving and approval process. We also received positive feedback from the Ministry on the Solve cycle, which we recommended as an agile cycle that could integrate with their existing workflow using tools like Tracxn. Based on this feedback, we refined our cycles and explored the implications of each cycle for different stakeholders. To help everyone involved understand the process better, a poster was designed to show the phases in an organic way. The poster aimed to make the idea clear and align all the stakeholders.

Poster

Prototype

To visualize the SMMS, an interactive prototype was produced. This prototype serves as a boundary object to provide an example showcase of how the tool might work and what it could look it. The following video highlights a walkthrough of the SMMS.

Implementation Roadmap

In order to visualise the implementation plan for the PRISM a roadmap was made. It includes key activities that need to be conducted, shows which stakeholders perform these activities, and shows how PRISM will be implemented across partnering harbours; all mapped out on a decided timeline.

In 2024, after the project gets approval, the key activities of the first horizon will be initiated. Team Market, together with the undermining department, will take the lead in the standardization of crime scripting. For this, they can use existing and ongoing research on crime scripting by TNO and Avans Hogeschool Breda. The SMMS (digital) infrastructure could be developed by the group TNO, SURF and NFI, who are currently collaborating on the development of GPTNL: A safe, Dutch AI that can be used in ministries. GPTNL will be the AI supporting the ‘Learn’ aspect of PRISM, and it will be integrated into the second horizon.

In the second horizon, RANTZEE will realise the expansion to Antwerp and Le Havre. From an interview with a high-level executive in RANTZEE, we have found that this organisation is working towards the same goals but is missing a platform like PRISM with implementation across harbours in order to minimise the waterbed effect. A spokesperson for the sea harbour police supported this idea and called for a uniform international way of conducting operations. For the time pacing, 2028 was chosen for the second horizon because it is expected that GPTNL will be operational by then.

Following that, 2032 would be the year when the machine learning system would be adequately trained. This timeframe also provides enough space for geographical EU-wide implementation will be realised in horizon three through the European Ports Alliance (EPA). Seaport police stated that in the future, the main objective should be to form a uniform way of working. The EPA aligns with the Ministry of Justice in their third pillar of 'setting up a Public Private Partnership against drug smuggling and criminal infiltration (European Commission Press corner, 2023).

Roadmap

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References

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  1. Anwar, B., Xiao, Z., Abbas, H. W., & Ali, Z. (2018). META REVIEW OF CRITICAL RISK FACTORS IN PPP PROJECTS OF EMERGING NATIONS IN SOUTH ASIA. The Journal of Developing Areas, 52(1), 183–209. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26417002

  2. European Commission Press corner. (2023). Questions and Answers on the Communication on the EU Roadmap to fight Drug Trafficking and Organised Crime. European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_23_4983

  3. Kavakli, B. (2021, May 4). Transparency is no longer an option; it’s a must. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2021/05/04/transparency-is-no-longer-an-option its-a-must/?sh=2900873575fe

  4. Organized crime in the 21st century. (2023). In Springer eBooks. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978 3-031-21576-6 6. Staring, R., Bisschop, L., Roks, R., Brein, E., & Van De Bunt, H. (2023). Drug Crime and the Port of Rotterdam: about the phenomenon and its approach. In Springer eBooks (pp. 43–61). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21576-6_4 7

  5. Van De Poel, I. (2020). Core values and value conflicts in cybersecurity: Beyond privacy versus security. In The International library of ethics, law and technology (pp. 45–71). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3 030-29053-5_3

Prototype
Solution DSP
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