Knowledge Management in the Proceeds of Crime Community

The title of this paper immediately raises a number of issues. Is there such an entity as ‘the proceeds of crime community’? If such an entity exists, can it be ‘managed’? What role does knowledge play in the community? This paper attempts to explore such issues, with particular reference to the field of financial investigation. It does so in the light of the report entitled ‘Recovering the Proceeds of Crime’, published by the Performance and Innovation Unit of the Cabinet Office, which was tasked with considering how effective the removal of criminal assets was in tackling crime and assessing whether more should be done, and which, it is submitted, largely represents the distilled knowledge of the proceeds of crime community.