Organized crime

SIGNIFICANCE: Organized crime threatens the safety and peace of the entire United States and its citizens by supplying illicit goods and services through complex structures of criminal conspiracies and corruption.

While definitions of organized crime vary from agency to agency and country to country, there is a consensus that organized crime constitutes systematic and planned criminal activities for profit by means of conspiracies. Organized crime groups are generally criminal enterprises built around ethnic or business relationships or both, that monopolize certain products or services. Organized crime groups rely on violence, corruption, and intimidation to protect their enterprises from rival crime groups and government interference.

A common myth about organized crime is that it is synonymous with the so-called Mafia, or La Cosa Nostra. There are actually many crime organizations, such as the Russian Mafia, the Japanese Yakuza, the Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, Chinese Triads, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and common street gangs. Although there are many similarities among these groups, their backgrounds vary. For example, the Russian Mafia imports its culture to America, while the motorcycle gangs are an entirely American phenomenon.

No single theory explains why organized crime exists. Organized crime is a dynamic phenomenon that responds opportunistically to markets that are constantly changing. As social and economic conditions affect demand by the public, organized groups adjust to the changes and remain powerful enterprises. Indeed, enterprise theory itself is often used to explain the existence of organized crime. This theory maintains that when legitimate markets do not provide the goods and services demanded by the public, criminal syndicates form to meet those demands.

The impetus behind the growth of most organized crime groups centers on market opportunities to provide illicit services and goods demanded by the public. These have included alcohol during the Prohibition era, loan sharking, illegal drugs, gambling, and prostitution. Another myth about organized crime is that it is a “big city” problem. Indeed much of the market demand for illicit services, such as illegal sports betting and contraband drugs emanates from rural America.

Characteristics of Organized Crime

Organized crime groups may be separated into traditional organizations, such as La Cosa Nostra and Yakuza and their allies; groups that specialize in drug trafficking, such as the Mexican and South American cartels; and groups that are broadly entrepreneurial, such as Russian, Nigerian, and Ukrainian organizations. Other groups include the so-called Italian criminal enterprises (ICE), which are close allies of the Mafia: the Ndrangheta; Sacred Crown; Sicilian Mafia; and the Camorra.

While there are many differences among organized crime groups, many of them share certain characteristics. Among the most pronounced common traits are these:

•nonideological motives

•monopolization of products and services

•permanent structures

•organized hierarchies

•use of force and intimidation

•restricted memberships

•provision of illicit goods and services

•profits based on criminal activities

•use of strategic planning to obtain goals

•reliance on government and law-enforcement corruption for immunity and control

•internal job specialization

•use of money laundering

•investments in legal businesses

•opportunistic adaptation to changing markets

•diversification of legal and illicit operations

•use of legal business as fronts for criminal activity

In addition, many modern organized crime groups operate nationally, transnationally, or internationally. The twenty-first century has also seen a growing trend among crime groups to form alliances with one another to increase their power and spheres of influence.

Economic Impact

The impact of organized crime on the United States is both economic and social. The economic impact can be measured in the indirect costs of unpaid tax revenues on the illicit goods and services offered by organized crime, and in billions of dollars in direct losses of companies and individuals to fraud, theft, hijacking, robbery, and other crimes.

Organized crime has also profited from labor racketeering when crime groups have taken control of large labor unions. In addition to controlling the membership dues of union members, corrupted unions can control the prices of goods by withholding labor, threatening strikes, and stopping deliveries of material, equipment, or goods. Unions that have been compromised by organized crime include the truckers’ International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), and the Laborers International Union of North America. By controlling these unions, organized crime has manipulated the construction, trucking, and shipping industries—all of which play central roles in the national economy. Through puppet unions, organized crime has had a powerful influence on the prices and quality of goods and services. Other industries whose unions have been infiltrated by organized crime include real estate, banking, hotels, bars, entertainment, legal gambling, meat and fish markets, and the garment industry.

Another major concern in the United States is the increase of environmental crime. Organized crime is heavily involved in the transporting and disposing of waste products, including hazardous wastes. The ability of organized crime to infiltrate legitimate businesses through intimidation and threats has contributed to unlawful dumping of wastes.

Social Impact

The social impact of organized crime is more difficult to measure than its economic impact but is clearly great. For example, organized crime’s most profitable enterprise is drug trafficking—a multibillion dollar business. By making contraband drugs more available to the public, organized crime makes a huge contribution to problems resulting from addiction and misuse of the drugs. The costs of drug treatment and prevention, the enforcement of drug laws, and losses of productivity due to drug use are difficult to estimate but are clearly substantial.

Both La Cosa Nostra and ICE groups are heavily involved in drug trafficking, but Colombian and Mexican drug cartels increasingly play the major role in supplying to the United States cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, and marijuana. There is also a substantial Asian-controlled traffic in drugs, particularly heroin. Many other groups, including urban street gangs and outlaw motorcycle gangs also traffic in illegal drugs.

Another, less-publicized, organized crime activity is trafficking in human beings. In addition to what amounts to a trade in female sex-slaves, there is also well-organized traffic in illegal immigrants, children offered for adoption, and low-wage workers for industry and agriculture. Another disturbing activity in which some organized crime groups reportedly engage is trafficking in human body parts. There have been reports of involuntary “donors” being murdered for their organs and other people who have been intimidated to sell their organs and sometimes even those of their children.

When the profits and impact of drug trafficking, trafficking in people, and financial crime are combined, it is clear that organized crime enterprises demand serious attention from governments and law enforcement. However, a long and ongoing tradition of corruption has rendered ineffective most efforts by law enforcement to combat organized crime. Presidential commissions and scholars who have examined organized crime have consistently concluded that organized crime cannot exist without the corruption of officers in the criminal justice system, elected and appointed government officials, and union and legitimate business leaders.

Organized Crime Structures

Every organized crime group has some form of structure. The forms those structures take range from well-defined hierarchical organizations such as La Cosa Nostra and Yakuza to loosely structured groups such as ethnic street gangs. Many criminal organizations have rules and codes of conduct that combine with their well-organized structures to make them as efficient as legitimate businesses. In fact, criminal organizations sometimes take over legitimate businesses and run them very effectively, while using them as fronts for criminal activities, vehicles for paying taxes to avoid being prosecuted for tax evasion, and money laundering operations.

The structures of different crime groups vary considerably. For example, the structure of La Cosa Nostra fits the patron-client model, which connects families with clients through tradition and emotional bonds. In this model, reciprocal relationships exist between the family patrons, or bosses, and their clients. The patrons provide resources, services, and goods, and the clients respond with shows of loyalty and respect and other, more tangible, forms of support.

The bureaucratic model of crime organizations is exemplified by the Colombian drug cartels and the outlaw motorcycle gangs. The Colombian cartels have bureaucratic structures with defined leadership positions and special functions such as distribution, transportation, production, security, financial management, and administration. Cartels resemble the structures of legitimate businesses, from the latters’ chief executive officers down to their workers.

Law-Enforcement Response

Combating organized crime requires enormous resources and team approaches that involve both national and international cooperation. Federal agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and others, are involved in the investigation and prosecution of organized crime. However, it is a long-term problem that requires long-term solutions.

Seizing the assets of criminal organizations and putting their members in prison has proved possible through the use of modern investigative techniques and technology. The creation of task forces to target major groups has allowed for the sharing of both information and resources among law enforcement agencies. The task force concept with federal, state, local, and international participation is perhaps the most effective tool against organized crime.

Despite the arrest and convictions of almost all La Cosa Nostra bosses, that organization remains a major player in the twenty-first century. Likewise, outlaw motorcycle gangs still exist after many of their members have been arrested and convicted. The success of law enforcement comes with substantial expenditures of personnel, time, and money. The gathering, analysis, and dissemination of timely and accurate intelligence is a key to building successful cases against these complex and powerful groups. Intelligence provides information for both tactical and strategic planning. After the structures, methods of operation, geographic locations of activity, and identities of leaders are known, law-enforcement strategies can be developed.

The most effective tools of law enforcement against organized crime have been physical and electronic surveillance, combined with networks of informants. The best informants are members of the criminal organizations who are willing to gather evidence against other members. Another successful law-enforcement strategy involves financial investigations that follow the cash flow emanating from illegal activities until the money is in the possession of the criminal organizations themselves.

Investigative grand juries are also effective tools against organized crime. They have the power to subpoena documents and grant immunity from prosecution to force members of organized crime to testify. The law most frequently used against organized crime is the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) of 1970 and its amendments, part of the Organized Crime Control Act. Other useful laws include federal and state conspiracy statutes and tax and antidrug laws.

Twenty-first Century Trends

Alliances among such groups as the Russian Mafia, La Cosa Nostra, the Colombian cartels, and others are producing a new transnational crime trend through their operations in many countries. Some alliances have even been forged among terrorist groups, Russian gangs that sell weapons, and Colombian cartels that sell drugs for profits to support terrorism. The unholy alliance between drug traffickers and terrorists has given rise to the term “narco-terrorism.”

Organized crime remained strong in the United States, especially as newer groups, such as the Russian Mafia, Triads, Tongs, and Latin American drug cartels of Mexico and Colombia become more powerful. Meanwhile, established groups such as La Cosa Nostra have seen their power lessened through prosecutions and competition from other groups; however, they remained resilient into the 2010s and 2020s, managing to maintain their hold on some of their former power.

To combat organized crime, law enforcement must develop dynamic strategies to match the evolving complexity and globalization of organized crime groups. This will require extraordinary national and international cooperation, innovative strategies and laws, and a public will to control and prevent criminal groups from threatening the nation and the world.

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"Where Does the Mafia Still Have Power?" The Week, 15 June 2020, theweek.com/90851/where-does-the-mafia-still-exist. Accessed 8 July 2024.