There are many definitions of organized crime. Analysis reveals that several characteristics of organized crime are common among these definitions Albanese, ; Finckenauer, ; Hagan, ; Maltz, These characteristics include the purpose of organized crime to financially profit through crime.
Organized crime mainly responds to public demand for services. Corruption is an enabler that protects organized crime operations.
These elements comprise organized crime as a continuing criminal enterprise. For the purposes of these Modules, a general definition of organized crime could read as follows:. Definition of organized crime for the purpose of these Modules. Organized crime is a continuing criminal enterprise that rationally works to profit from illicit activities that are often in great public demand.
Its continuing existence is maintained through corruption of public officials and the use of intimidation, threats or force to protect its operations. A general definition has limitations, however, because organized crime activity varies across countries, regions, crime-types, and nature of its organization. Therefore, it is important to know the general elements of organized crime, but greater knowledge is needed to understand how it manifests in different locations and criminal contexts.
Doha Declaration. Education for Justice. What is Good Governance? Contemporary issues relating to conditions conducive both to the spread of terrorism and the rule of law Topic 2. Contemporary issues relating to the right to life Topic 3. Contemporary issues relating to foreign terrorist fighters Topic 4. Definition of Crime Prevention 2. Key Crime Prevention Typologies 2. Crime Problem-Solving Approaches 4. Identifying the Need for Legal Aid 3. This characterization of organized crime as an integral part of society apparently reflected the perspective of the old established protestant middle class on Chicago as a city that, after years of rapid growth and cultural change, was drowning in crime, corruption and moral decay.
The Depression Era The original understanding of organized crime did not prevail for long. Beginning in the mid s but especially during the Depression Era, the concept of organized crime changed significantly. First of all, the term organized crime began to be used outside of Chicago. But only for a short time did it function as a generic term in the criminal-policy debate. By the mid s it was almost completely replaced by the somewhat narrower concept of racketeering 5. In the late s and early s organized crime no longer referred to an amorphous "criminal class" but to "gangsters and racketeers" who were organized in "gangs," "syndicates" and "criminal organizations" and followed "big master criminals" who functioned as "powerful leaders of organized crime" 6.
Some of these leaders moved into the limelight and gained celebrity status as "Public Enemies," most notably Al Capone 7. While the picture of the "criminal class" became more and more differentiated the understanding of the relation between organized crime and society took a decisive turn. Organized crime was no longer seen as a product of social conditions that could be remedied easily, like the deficiencies in the criminal justice system the Chicago Crime Commission had denounced earlier.
Instead of social and political reform, the emphasis now was on vigorous law enforcement 8. The Kefauver Committee From the late s to the late s the concept of organized crime had all but disappeared from the public debate.
It returned in when a Senate Committee set out "to investigate organized crime in interstate commerce. The Kefauver Committee marked a significant change in the perception of organized crime in two respects. On the one hand, organized crime no longer appeared to be primarily a product of local conditions but instead as a problem that existed on a national scale and threatened municipalities from the outside.
On the other hand, the notion of the Mafia as an organization of Italian-Americans added an ethnic component to the concept of organized crime. It is somewhat surprising that this had not happened earlier because the image of the Mafia as an Italian-American organization was not quite as new. It had first appeared in when the chief of police of New Orleans was murdered by alleged mafiosi Yet another aspect is noteworthy in this context. For the first time the law-enforcement community took an active role in the conceptualization of organized crime.
It was the Federal Bureau of Narcotics that provided the testimony that led the Kefauver Committee to assert the existence of the Mafia in the United States In contrast, the FBI completely resented the concept of organized crime before Prior to its director J. Edgar Hoover had not only refused the notion of an Italian-American Mafia, he also criticized more general conceptions of syndicates and criminal organizations as a dominant factor in crime The Late s to the Late s: From Apalachin to "The Godfather" The interest in organized crime and in the Mafia that the Kefauver Committee had stirred faded in the following years.
But beginning in late a series of events brought organized crime back to center stage and eventually, by the late s, led to the merging of the two concepts of organized crime and Mafia.
Organized crime had become synonymous with a single ethnically homogeneous organizational entity The s: The Concept of Organized Crime Reconsidered The Mafia-centered concept of organized crime that had evolved during the s and s had to no small degree been the result of a focus on New York City Despite its tremendous impact on public perception it soon proved unsuitable for devising valid law-enforcement strategies for the entire United States.
After rejecting a proposal to outlaw membership in the Cosa Nostra 15 , Congress passed the RICO statute in with an extremely broad underlying concept of organized crime Likewise many state commissions on organized crime which were established in response to the national debate at best paid lip-service to the concept of Cosa Nostra as an all-encompassing criminal organization.
Instead, they defined organized crime in much broader terms to include less structured gangs and illicit enterprises A similar uneasiness with the Mafia paradigm was evident among law-enforcement officials on the state and local levels 18 and even among members of the federal Organized Crime Strike Forces that had been established in a number of cities since While some defined organized crime to include only Cosa Nostra members others included any group of two or more persons formed to commit a criminal act The Concept of Non-Traditional and International Organized Crime in the s and s Eventually, the notion that there was more to organized crime than the Cosa Nostra did not lead to a profound revision of the conception of organized crime.
Instead, in the late s and early s the concept of non-traditional organized crime emerged which merely transfered the Mafia model to other ethnically defined criminal organizations allegedly similar to Cosa Nostra, such as East-Asian, Latin-American and Russian groups, outlaw-motorcycle gangs and so-called prison gangs In recent years, outlaw-motorcycle gangs and prison gangs have somewhat dropped out of sight while groups of criminals from Asia and Europe, especially criminals from the former Soviet Union, have received more attention In comparison with Cosa Nostra they are now believed to be at least of equal importance, especially in view of the successful prosecution of numerous Cosa Nostra members in a series of RICO trials since the mid s Today, the concept of organized crime is applied to domestic crime groups like the Cosa Nostra and to what is now refered to as "international organized crime," that is criminal organizations believed to be operating on a global scale, including Chinese Triads and the so-called "Russian Mafia".
It seems that to the extent the Cosa Nostra is believed to lose ground and organized crime is turning into an issue of international politics rather than to remain an issue of immediate relevance the American public has lost much of its prior interest in the subject. Summary In essence, during the last 80 years the perception of organized crime has evolved from an integral facet of big-city life to an assortment of global criminal players who challenge even the most powerful countries like the United States.
The Conceptual History of Organized Crime in Germany The currently dominating American concept of organized crime is quite similar to today's prevalent understanding in Germany. However, the developments leading up to this consensus were not quite as uniform so that it makes sense to take a look at the specific conceptual history in a country like Germany, where the concept of organized crime entered the criminal-policy debate at an earlier point in time than in many other countries.
The s and s: Organized Crime in the U. There was no sense of a direct relevance these issues might have for Germany. Then towards the late s concerns were articulated by law-enforcement officials that organized crime in the United States and also in Italy could pose a threat for the future. Sicilians banded into groups to protect themselves; by the 19th century, some of these groups emerged as private armies that extorted protection money from landowners and evolved into the criminal enterprise known today as the Sicilian Mafia.
The American Mafia, a separate entity, rose to power in the Prohibition era of the s and soon flourished. By the late 20th century, however, anti-racketeering laws and other techniques brought down high-ranking mobsters both in Italy and the United States.
By the early 21st century, the Mafia had been weakened but it still has not been driven out of business. By the later part of the 19th century in Sicily, Italy, criminal gangs who had become known as the Mafia flourished by using violence and intimidation to extract protection money from landowners and merchants. By the s, the Sicilian Mafia was facing a challenge from Prime Minister Benito Mussolini , who came to power in Mussolini viewed the Mafia as a threat to his Fascist regime and launched a brutal crackdown in which more than a thousand suspected Mafiosi were convicted and thrown in prison.
Some Italian mobsters escaped to the United States, where they became involved in the bootleg liquor business and the burgeoning American Mafia. Following World War II , the Mafia rose again as mob-backed building companies worked to dominate the s construction boom in Sicily.
In the United States, the Mafia developed as a separate entity during the Prohibition era of the s, as Italian-American neighborhood gangs morphed into sophisticated criminal enterprises through their success in the illicit liquor trade. In , mobster Lucky Luciano masterminded the establishment of the Commission, which would serve as a central governing body for the more than 20 Italian-American crime groups, or families, then operating in the United States.
After Prohibition was repealed in , the American Mafia moved beyond bootlegging and entrenched itself in a range of illegal ventures, from drug trafficking to loan-sharking, while also infiltrating labor unions and legitimate businesses such as construction, waterfront commerce and the New York garment industry.
In the early s, Estes Kefauver , a U. However, citing a lack of specific evidence, the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies, along with Congress, failed to take any substantial action. Then, in , police in the small upstate New York town of Apalachin raided a gathering of more than 60 mobsters from around the country. In the early s, U. Attorney General Robert Kennedy stepped up government efforts to fight organized crime and corruption in labor unions. Kennedy also pressured FBI director J.
Starting in the later part of the 20th century, the government began winning its war against the Mafia. During the s and s, RICO laws were used to convict high-ranking mobsters, who in the past had been able to avoid prosecution. Similar laws were effective in producing mass convictions in Italy during this time. Some Mafiosi, faced with long prison sentences, opted to testify against fellow mobsters in exchange for a place in the witness-protection program.
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