ASK senior police what they need to hunt down the Mr Bigs of the world, and the traditional response is "more cops".
But Scotland's top detectives are now looking to a range of other professions to tackle drug smugglers, human traffickers and the gangsters who perpetrate violence on Scotland's streets.
The Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA) has
begun a mapping exercise to piece together the biggest picture of organised crime in the country.
It will inevitably highlight the increasingly cross-border nature of organised crime, whether it be the trade in sex slaves or the growing problem of credit-card fraud.
It is expected to identify a growing range of sophisticated skills that serious criminals are developing or employing through shadowy "facilitators" on the fringes of their organisations, to rake in their illicit millions of pounds. These include money transfers, exploiting country-specific legal loopholes, information technology and shipping.
These are skills police believe the few hundred crime bosses in the UK are relying on to generate up to £18 billion a year in so-called "dirty-money".
The Scotsman understands this will trigger demands from senior police for more resources to employ an army of professionals whose expertise will enable officers to better investigate organised crime. Lawyers, accountants, computer experts and linguists are likely to be top of the wish-list.
One senior SCDEA figure said: "We need to understand better the true nature and extent of that organised crime.
"We need to make sure we have the skills inside this agency to enable (us] to cope with that. "As the nature of the threat changes and we understand that threat, what that will tell us is we need some different skills internally.
"We may need additional skills around language. We might need some additional skills around cultural awareness. I'm convinced we will continue to need enhanced skills in and around financial investigation and accountancy."
The mapping exercise is expected to conclude next year and police want it to become part of the agency's routine work.
As with every demand for cash from the police or any other public body, the SCDEA may have a job on their hands convincing Kenny MacAskill, the justice secretary, to loosen the purse-strings. But their case should be helped by the fact the SCDEA is operating around 10 per cent below its desired level of officers.
The full article contains 406 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
