About SOCA

We work to put serious criminals behind bars, and use many other tactics to fight crime and keep you safe. In particular, we want to ensure crime doesn’t pay and that it’s harder to commit.

The power to counter criminals

SOCA officers can have the combined powers of police, customs and immigration officers. We also have a substantial range of tools and legislation to target criminals with – everything from the ability to recover assets through to Serious Crime Prevention Orders. We work with agencies and officials across the UK and all over the world to help us do our job and to help them do theirs.

New ways of fighting crime

We use traditional law enforcement methods – investigating, and arresting criminals. We also draw on innovative new approaches to prevent crimes from happening in the first place.

Here are some examples:

First class intelligence - we use all kinds of ways to gather the knowledge we need to know where, when and how to strike to best effect.

Monitoring serious career criminals - in some cases we watch them for life, to prevent them from continuing their criminal activities in prison or after release.

Hitting them where it hurts - by taking criminals’ cash and property. For many serious criminals, this worries them more than the prospect of going to prison.

Working in partnership - serious organised crime is a major problem that affects everyone every day, so we co-operate with law enforcement, public and private sector partners to counter it.

Worldwide operations - we go anywhere we need to when tackling criminal activity. For instance, a street drug dealer is just the last link in a chain that probably stretches to the other side of the world. So our activities aren’t limited by borders.

Making it harder to commit crime - for example, passing on details of suspicious financial activities or forged identities to banks before frauds can take place.

Find out more about how we work

Library – here’s where you can read relevant reports and legislation.

How we are run – the structure of SOCA plus how we’re accountable.

How we work – our priorities and main areas of work, including gathering intelligence, investigation, new approaches and asset recovery.

Working in partnership – who we work with, both in the UK and abroad.

UK Financial Intelligence Unit (UKFIU) – the part of SOCA that focuses on the proceeds of crime and terrorist financing.