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Essay on Different Types of Organized Crime in Canada

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Different Types of Organized Crime in Canada

Organized crime in Canada has many faces. The people who engage in organized crime are as varied as the types of organized crimes they engage in. There are essentially four categories of organized crime in Canada. These four categories are: (A) Aboriginal organized crime groups, (B) Outlaw motorcycle gangs, (C) Traditional Italian Mafia crime groups, ethnic groups such as Asian Triads and Vietnamese gangs, (D) Colombian cartels and emerging crime groups from Russia and Nigeria (Beare 1996: 75). Any of these groups could potentially be linked to such illegal activity as: the trafficking of narcotics, extortion, loan-sharking, various types of frauds, smuggling of cigarettes, alcohol, …show more content…

Many Aboriginal groups have begun to make ties with Asian criminal groups and the more traditional organized crime groups (Mafia). One example of this is within the Vietnamese community in Edmonton cocaine traffickers were using smuggled cigarettes as a medium of exchange for cocaine. 200,000 dollars worth of cigarettes was worth 1.1 kilograms of cocaine (Linquist 1994: 34). Aboriginal crimes tend to be crimes of opportunity. That is to say that Aboriginal groups do not go out and look for illegal ways to make money, they just sort of stumble into them. However once a successful smuggling route is established, this route is quickly taken advantage of by other criminal groups. One good or perhaps it should be considered a bad example of this is a gun smuggling operation. The operation was originally begun as a way to support the military activities of a small number of Mohawk communities. This operation's clients now include a Jamaican street gang, the Montreal West Gang, and motorcycle gangs (Beare 1996: 77).

The next group of interest to us is outlaw motorcycle gangs. In the old days members of this type of organized crime group were used mainly as hit men by the more sophisticated groups. Over the years however these groups have begun to take part in the more sophisticated dealings of the groups they had previously worked for. It has gotten to the point where now these motorcycle gangs are the ones hiring people to do the work that the Mafia used to hire them to

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