Abstract
The paper proposes to question the theoretical and methodological treatment that the so-called organized crime has been receiving in Brazilian social sciences. It establishes an articulated reflection with which criminology addressed this issue throughout time. It points out some characteristics of the national academic production on the phenomenon, which is mainly associated with drug trafficking and organized groups formed in prisons. It presents a research agenda on organized crime by considering the heuristic potential of a sociological approach, which has as its central element the State in all its political, institutional, legal complexity, and the transitivity between legal and illegal as a differential factor of its dynamics, proposing the notion of “illegalism” as an analytical framework for the phenomenon.
Keywords:
Organized crime; Criminology; State; Illegalism