Controlling Organized Crime Paper

Gang involvement and its associated violent crime have become a rapidly growing problem for the United States. Generally, gangs consist of young people of the same ethnic, racial, and economic background. Usually of a low socio-economic status, these gangs engage in illegal money making activities and intimidate their neighborhoods and rival gangs with violent crimes and victimization. Gang members exemplify a high value for group loyalty and sacrifice.

The only way to take down organized crime will be if the government is aware of the roots of why the syndicates form, because what would a country be without being aware of all of its citizens? Though the American Dream may be something that doesn’t reverberate with today’s generations, it should be kept in every American’s hearts. “The future will be determined by the young”, said Eleanor Roosevelt, “and there is no more essential task today, it seems, to me, than to bring before them once more, in all its brightness, in all its splendor and beauty, the American

Organized crime can be narrowed down to five unique areas of criminal activity. The first being racketeering, an umbrella term, meant to describe when any group or groups conduct one or more of the other criminal activities. One of the most successful ways the federal government has been able to hinder the actions of hardcore criminals is through the formation of the RICO Act (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations). The second area of major criminal activity is vice, or vice operations. This has to do with victim-less crimes such as drugs, gambling, and prostitution. Again, these crimes are highly problematic because it is the public that decides whether or not they prosper. It’s all too easy to build a case against someone breaking a law by importing huge quantities of controlled substances across a border, but it becomes much more difficult to stem the sale or need for such drugs once they have reached their intended destinations.

The Italian mafia group is an organized crime in Italy in the 18th century, there are several organized crime groups, and the Sicilian mafia known as Cosa Nostra of Sicily is one of the powerful, most famous, secretive criminal. Today organized crime has comes to us at every corner, organized crime is a group of criminals who are involved in illegal activities usually for money. Cosa Nostra explains how the mafia began, how it developed its rituals and its code of ‘honor’. Cosa Nostra is an Italian mafia like an Italian mob, founded in Sicily, Italy in the year of mid 1800s

When one thinks about organized crime in the United States, an infamous group always comes to mind, the American Mafia. What many people are unaware of is the official name for one of the major organized criminal syndicates in the United States is La Cosa Nostra, “Our Thing” being its literal translation ("History of La Cosa Nostra"). Originating from Sicily, Mafia-like factions emerged in places such as Harlem and Brooklyn in New York and even in Chicago; these neighborhoods were impoverished with a high Italian population. In other areas across the East Coast of United States, such as in New Orleans, Mafia factions emerged with the immigration of Italians in the late 19th century, mainly from Sicily and Southern Italy ("Mafia in the United States." History.com). According to the FBI, despite having Sicilian Mafia roots, the American Mafia is its own independent organization in the United States, thus the dubbed name “La Cosa Nostra”. In the 1920s, the Mafia took advantage of Prohibition and focused on the bootleg liquor business and became “sophisticated criminal enterprises” ("Mafia in the United States.").

Changes in law, policy, and operations will bring forth efforts to decrease organized crime. This is key to addressing the problem.

Organize crime is a conspiratorial activity involving the coordination of numerous people in the planning and execution of illegal acts or in the pursuit of a legitimate objective by unlawful means, for example, threatening a legitimate business to get stake in it. However, organize crime involves continuous commitment by primary members, although individuals with specialized skills may be brought in as needed. Therefore, organize crime is usually structured along hierarchical lines is a chieftain supported by close advisers, lower subordinates, and so on.

Organized crime involves a group of people made up of several ethnicities and international unions, who coordinate as well as work in unison, apart, or in line with legal enterprises alongside political realms. Many analysts have concurred that organized crime is both an impediment to academic projects and a realistic social issue that obligates urgent solution. Strategies implemented to limit organized crime often tend to be inclined towards one form of the two approaches. One of the approaches is tailored on dealing with individual members of the criminal gangs, whereas the second stresses on the structural aspects along with market networks that assist in accomplishing organized crime.

There are at least two competing definitions: one that focuses on particular groups of people, and one that focuses on particular types of crime. Both definitions have some validity, and neither is sufficient to completely describe the global reality. Understanding the way that real-life organized crime situations fit these two definitions makes a big difference in the ways we might go about solving these problems. When most people say “organized crime”, it is often a shorthand way of referring to groups of people, usually “the mafia” and similar groups. Understood in this way, organized criminal activity is simply whatever these organized crime groups do. The people are consistent across time, although what they do may change: today maybe extortion, tomorrow maybe heroin trafficking, or check kiting, or procurement fraud, or all of the above. The emphasis is on the group, not the nature of the crime. This is an important distinction, because it implies a number of assumptions about the way that organized crime works. Law enforcement agencies use this definition almost as a matter of course, because the criminal justice system is designed to deal with specific offences committed by specific people. Police arrest suspects and seize their property, prosecutors secure convictions one-by-one, and only individual people can be sent to prison. When actors in such a system plan proactively, they are limited by the tools at hand, and this affects the way they conceptualize the

Imagine living in a world where crime ruled. A world where gangsters were more powerful than politicians, owned the police, and ran the city in whatever way they felt. They robbed whom they wanted and killed when they didn't get their way. Now stop imagining and realize that this happened here in the United States of America in the 1920's. It was run by an organization made up mainly of Italians called the Mafia.

Organized crime was large-scale organization with highly systemic economic framework that operated in the illegal market with the purpose to make profits as much as possible. By making the production of some products and services illegal, the entrance to the illegal market was restricted. Another barrier for the entrance of the illegal market was the financial economics of scale.

It is very difficult to give one unified definition for the term ‘Organized Crime’. Similarly it is very difficult to give one concise definition for the term ‘Organized Crime Groups’. The conventional definitions of the organized crime does not provide us with any single definition for such groups but provides us with certain characteristics that are most commonly found in the criminal groups also used synonymously with the criminal enterprises. The FBI defines a criminal group or a criminal enterprise as a group of individuals with an identified hierarchy, or comparable structure, engaged in significant criminal activity. These organizations often engage in multiple criminal activities and have extensive supporting networks (“Organized Crime” n.d.)

There are several state-sponsored definitions of organized crime. According to Lyman & Potter (2014), FBI defines organized crime as any group having formal structure whose objective is to obtain money illegally. Internal Revenue Service defines organized crime as individuals or groups combined to obtain monetary, commercial gains, or profits by illegal

Organized crime can have a huge effect not only on individuals, but also on a whole economy due to the black market and its illegal operations. Organized crime also tries to penetrate into legal businesses to strengthen the overall organization. Organizations members and the organizations itself, increases its legal money by investing in power and influence which thus givens them comfortability and a sense of feeling secure (Verhage and Ponsaers, 2009, p.407). Since, individual make up a crime family or organization, one cannot just look at money laundering on a group level, but must also look at those that make up the group and help earn a profit for the organization, they are a part and play more an important role than the organization as

Therefore, it would be better to go to elementary schools to raise awareness through presentations and discussions rather than in middle or high schools. Additionally, determining who the individuals are that are at risk or highly likely to join a gang, could possibly change the outcome. If we could get those students into the right programs and give them the help they need early on, then we would not only change their life but also reduce youth involvement in organized crime. A study done by (author names) showed that both depression and suspension rates decreased at (school name) after the LAPD ran its program. These positive results should be encouraging for us and something that we need to strive for as a community. Understandably, resources can be an issue. Despite this, I think that if we even committed just a few officers to the cause we would see increasingly positive results because our community is not that large. Also, if teachers and school staff are willing to cooperate too, then we’ll see that it is an easily achievable goal. Certainly, it will take time and we might have to try out a few things before we find what exactly works, but in the end, it will be worth