Running head; ORGANIZED CRIME AND SOCIETY 1

Organized crime and society

Name

Institution
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Organized crime and society

Organized crime simply refers to the groups of highly consolidated enterprises, whose

main target is making money and profits through illegal means, led by criminals and which can

either be local, national or international. However, politics play some role of activating some of

the terrorist groups. Despite the fact that all criminals carry out illegal activities in the society

that affects everyone in one way or the other, there are three types of organized crime. These are;

gang criminality, racketeering and syndicated crime, where the degree of dangerousness

increases from the former to the latter. This essay will therefore try to describe them

individually, so as to find out how they operate and survive independently. To begin with is gang

criminality. This type involves activities like robbery, kidnapping and vehicle theft, which they

carry out on large scale (Vaccaro & Palazzo 2015). The gangs whose hardened criminals are

equipped with pistols and sometimes vests that are bullet-proof are always determined to

perform anything, including using violence and killing. Although most of the members in the

gangs seem to be peaceful and disciplined, they are the most dangerous because their actions

speak a lot about them. Moreover, the activities of these gangs are often carried out in larger

geographical areas with them having some specific hideouts where meetings and arrangements

are made. Besides that, the gang criminals have their records registered in the police for

committing regular crimes because most of them were conscripted from a group of either

murderers who once escaped from facing the law, specialized gangsters or other illegal and

dangerous groups in the society. In some instances, the gang criminals target some specific

places like restaurants, malls and gambling sites and abruptly conduct robbery where innocent

individuals who do not collaborate with them are sometimes shot and killed. However, most of

these criminals are not lucky at all, because the police destroy and arrest a larger number of them
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after thorough investigations and hunts. Secondly, racketeering is another type of organized

crime that carries out its illegitimate operations in the society where most innocent individuals

reside. This gang of criminals therefore involves application of force to get money from both the

authentic and inauthentic businesses (Stier & Edwards 2017). Besides getting money from

people forcefully, they engage cheating individuals, selling fake commodities and many other

things like drugs in order to acquire money from the people. This group seems to be somehow

different from the other one, the gang criminality, in the sense that, its members do not leave

with everything, all the profits, but instead allow the possessors of the illicit business to go on

with their operations including prostitution and drug trafficking by giving them regular fixed

money, well known as the racketeers. Most often, these racketeers approach businessmen with

the excuses of providing them with security, but with a either a weekly wage or monthly salary

or fee. Even if the businesspeople do not come into agreement with these criminals, the former

are always forced to accept the suggestion and move on. In some instances, if the individuals that

are said to be ‘protected’ by these racketeers do not adhere to their rules, they are killed and their

property lured. Thirdly, the paper will look at the final type of organized crime and that is

syndicate crime. This type of crime involves supplying of prohibited goods like drugs and

services like gambling by an organized criminal gang, often referred to as the ‘mafia’. The

syndicates operate from reputable headquarters, which are usually located in big cities where

then the procedures of the illegal businesses are laid down (Galeotti 2014). The only exception

that this gang has is that, they do not apply violence in its operations. The syndicate members are

well-known to the society as respectable members because of the high quality of life that they

live and also their associations with individuals or groups of individuals with higher profiles in
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the nation. Meetings and discussions are always made in specific places after some specific time

by all the leaders of the crime syndicates so as to find the way forward for their businesses.

Nonetheless, with all this groups organized to carry out the criminal activities, their

actions have a greater impact on the society. One of the impacts of organized crime is that, it

leads to many cases of school dropouts among the youth. Crime cases affect the youth in one

way or the other, especially when they find themselves befriending crime-prone colleagues. Due

to the pressure they receive, these innocent and young school-going children are always forced to

‘test’ the fruits of all the promises that were offered by the friends like smoking or using certain

drugs. These bizarre activities make them to be addicted to such odd stuff hence parting ways

with their education (Stier & Edwards 2017). Another impact of this organized crime on the

society is that, people end up using counterfeit products which might affect their lives. Sectors

like the health care ones are directly affected by this crime because some of them are involved in

fraud where fake drugs and other pharmaceutical products are manufactured and distributed to

them. This can however pose a great threat to the lives of the consumers of such products.

Moreover, the next impact that these criminals pose to the community is that, they have killed

the confidence of the people. Since the groups conduct their activities using violent and

intimidation means, most people have lost their confidence because they fear that the criminals

can even invade their communities, the neighborhoods or even their own homes and cause

destruction. Other than those, organized crime has some monetary effects in the society. The

criminals achieve this by all the illegal businesses that they conduct to lure people’s money and

even forcing people to pay them for faking some services like offering protection to them. After

all these large sums of money, the members of the organized crime evade to pay taxes and any

other revenues to the government. These activities therefore deal a huge blow to the economy,
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making it to lag behind. Another impact of organized crime is that, it leads to violation of human

rights. In most cases, these criminal activities involve human trafficking where women and

younger children are trafficked to other countries for purposes of sexual use. These women are

involved in forced prostitution whereas the young children are included in the pornographic

activities. In the process of all these activities, some of the individuals contract dangerous

diseases while other even end up losing their lives (Vaccaro & Palazzo 2015). Nevertheless, all

those activities, from drug trafficking all the way to forcing the individuals into involving

themselves in such activities violate their human rights.

In addition to that, there are several theories that try to explain the behavior and

motivation of these crimes. However, the Alien Conspiracy Theory seems to provide the best

explanation for organized crime. The theory, which has a peculiar history of America, survives

the critics and resistance because it is believed to be in possession of the concepts and facts for

explaining organized crime in detail. It was developed in the year 1900 in the United States and

it holds that, organized crime is not innate in America but instead it was brought in by the aliens

(Galeotti 2014). However, after some cases of immigration in the United States, some

immigrants from Italy also found their way into the United States. Some groups of people also

identified as the Mafias entered the United States illegally and began conducting criminal

activities, including one instance in the New Orleans, where a murder case was reported.

Nonetheless, it is the period between the first and the second world wars that the this term

‘organized crime’ gained much popularity, although in this period, it was used to refer to the

people called the racketeers or gangsters. Therefore, after the Second World War, the alien

conspiracy theory developed, while a narcotics bureau was trying to figure out the Mafia group

that was being run by some Italians and whose news had spread for having conducted some
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organized crime in the United States. Also, it is the social and political setting of the country

helped to develop and organize on how the mafia groups structured themselves. It is between

1860 and 1915 that a relatively higher number of Italians moved or rather immigrated to the

United States, so as to relieve the economic pressure that was experienced in the southern part of

Italy. However, after the first set of the Italians had moved to the southern parts of the United

States, they took the advantage and therefore harassed and oppressed the ones that arrived at the

place later on, forcing them to do some activities like manual labor (Vaccaro & Palazzo 2015).

More importantly, before the Italians even started moving to the United States, the mafia groups

had already been instituted. It was therefore something just like a continuation in the United

States, where the crime cases began with the murder of the Chief of Police in the New Orleans.

Seven Italians were arrested later on where the attack was charged to a Sicilian Assassination

League. The term organized crime therefore first appeared in the 1920s, where at first it was

looked into as a local issue and later on found to be like a national issue. In its view as local

issue, the Crime Commission of Chicago used the term to describe the systematic way in which

the criminals in Chicago could take crime as a business, and conduct it on daily basis. It was

almost 7 years later that organized crime began penetrating and recognized as a national issue

after the presidential elections. The opposition group often applied and used the term to criticize

the government’s ways of doing things. Later on, after the United States government found or

rather realized that the organized crime groups were becoming fierce, it decided to employ or

relatively to formerly adopt the Conspiracy Theory.

Lastly, since this problem of organized crime is becoming a threat both to the individuals

and the government at large, measures should be put in place to counteract it. However,

transnational crime seems to be the major, causing sleepless nights to most leaders in the
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respective countries. One of the measures is putting strict rules on the law enforcement agencies

because they are the one that deal with these crime cases. All the affected nations together with

their citizens should come into collaboration and agreement to enact this measure, especially on

the police force. However, due to the high cases of corruption among these officers, the criminals

in one way or the other bribe them so that they can be allowed to continue with their illicit

actions and sometimes to be given protection by the same police or peace officers (Galeotti

2014). Therefore, all the nations should come up with their officers who deal with the crime

cases, so that a link can be created between them. In case then one side is affected by the

organized crime gangs, support would come from all over and the situation be ceased or rather

terminated. This measure is best described in the conspiracy theory, where it requires and holds

that cooperation should be highly adhered by all the nations for the realization of success.
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References

Vaccaro, A., & Palazzo, G. (2015). Values against violence: Institutional change in

societies dominated by organized crime. Academy of Management Journal, 58(4), 1075-1101.

Stier, E. H., & Edwards, P. (2017). Strategic Decision Making in Organized Crime

Control: The Need for a Broadened Perspective. Major issues in organized crime control.

Galeotti, M. (2014). Global crime today: the changing face of organised crime.

Routledge.