A safe floriculture industry
The floriculture industry is vulnerable to criminal interference because of its intricate international logistics. The Resilient Floriculture Sector Approach aims to protect the beauty of the sector and address its vulnerabilities. The focus is prevention; prevention being better than cure. We can do this by helping entrepreneurs become resilient, providing them with knowledge to quickly recognize signs of crime, report wrongdoing and take preventive measures.
Organized crime is constantly trying to abuse the floriculture industry and the people who work in it. For narcotics smuggling and labour exploitation, for example. This colourful sector is attractive to criminal interference because of its international nature and its intricate logistics.
Our approach involves various government partners such as the municipalities of Westland, Katwijk, Aalsmeer and Uithoorn, the police, Public Prosecutor’s Office, Customs, Riec The Hague, Riec Amsterdam-Amstelland and the Tax Authority. But also private parties like Royal FloraHolland.
We actively cooperate with parties such as TLN, TFOC, HVO Querido, SNCU, PVO The Hague, PVO Amsterdam-Amstelland, PVO Netherlands, CCV, and many others.
The cooperation is aimed at tackling undermining crime and abuse in the sector. We focus on making businesses resilient. We do this by sharing knowledge, promoting monitoring, control and enforcement, increasing willingness to report and helping to erect effective barriers.
Knowledge & research
Criminals are smart and their undermining criminal activities change rapidly and continuously. Constant research is needed to find the answers. It helps us gain useful insights into how to act. With these insights, we can arrive at the right approach to combat the undermining activities.
Applied scientific research but also practice-oriented research is vital for the Resilient Floriculture Approach. If we really want to disrupt and reduce criminal activity, we need to deploy the right actions in the right places, within the legal frameworks we have for doing so. In addition to understanding the various (international) historical flows from history, we also need to investigate the current trends. What is going on and how can we prevent it from now on? Many of these insights and practical investigations depend on reporting signals. So it is important to receive as many signals, observations and reports as possible.
Resilience & barrier formation
Tackling undermining crime has long ceased to be exclusively a police or government task. An effective approach requires intensive cooperation with private and public parties joining forces. Only together we take a stand against undermining practices.
These unlawful activities form a broad and complex problem in which criminial interference happens at the local level. Consider an employee who may or may not be forced to divulge sensitive company information, a driver who may inadvertently take packages, or an official who may or may not be forced to look the other way. To reduce these practices and prevent them as much as possible, our approach is to have private and public partners work together. Our goal is to create as many barriers (thresholds) as possible to prevent criminal acts and to increase the resilience of employees and employers. That way we don’t just keep mopping up but shutting down on crime!
Monitoring, Supervision, Detection & Enforcement
In addition to a variety of measures to prevent crime in the floriculture sector, it is necessary to intervene (actively fighting crime and abuse). Therefore, supervision, monitoring, detection and enforcement are indispensable parts of our approach. Together with the other components, we are working to increase the resilience of entrepreneurs in the sector.
We invest in good relationships with investigative agencies, also internationally, to stand strongly united against criminal interference in the sector. Through integrated control activities, we work from one government. Through checks we become visible, showing criminals that tackling undermining practices is serious and that the investigative services and private parties are joining forces. In addition, these checks collect vital information for finding effective barriers.
We support and protect businesses and their employees. Should criminal organizations begin to resist action and/or intimidate or provoke corruption, we are there with all partners to address this.
See what you can do yourself to recognize the signs.
External communications & press relations
Through our approach, we communicate with various groups such as entrepreneurs, governments and investigative agencies to share knowledge in order to make the floriculture sector resilient against criminal practices.
We work with partners in our approach to keep the industry strong and safe. We share the measures we take and the knowledge we gather with business owners to alert them to signs that indicate criminal activity. We also inform you about reporting options, training and how to prevent crime within your company as much as possible.
