Organized Crime : Small Street Gangs Or Terrorist Groups

Gangs and Organized Crime in the United States is on the rise. With the increase in turf wars, position and the financial gains, gang wars and Organized Crime are linked together in many ways. Within this paper, I will show how they are all tied together in. The M-13’s are the largest reported gang controlling large areas of our states. However, the largest area to which the MS-13’s control is within our own capital, Washington D.C. Their leaders rule all the gangs from inside El Salvador. I will discuss other gangs, and their ties into Organized Crime.

Security threat groups and prison gangs are responsible for a lot of the crimes that occur in prison. Well-organized and highly structured prison gangs who have leaders and influences have been around decades. Gangs in prison can be described as groups whose activities pose a real threat to the safety of the institutional staff and other inmates and also to security of the correctional institution (Beth, 1991). These gangs always have strong leaders and use that leadership role to their advantage as an influence on other inmates by means of violence. Sometimes they are interested in drugs, alcohol, and contraband to other prisoners. Gang activity is an increasing activity in prisons in major cities, rural communities, and prisons. The Aryan Brotherhood, Black guerilla Family, The Folk Nation, The Mexican Mafia, and MS 13 are five of the most dangerous gangs to prison systems among the many gangs that that are known out there.

This is mainly because of the services the organizations provide, the fear they cause, the indistinct information available about them, and their national level of organization. In order to gain influence in a community, criminal organizations will provide services that the people within that community might want, for a cost: immunity from any actions taken against organized crime. In return for helping fund a politician, help a police officer with the bills, or even help the average citizen or businessperson overcome a problem. The only requirement is that in exchange for that service, the person must be willing to ignore the organization’s illegal actions (Ruth 114). Organized crime also utilizes fear to control the community by selectively fulfilling threats to give the appearance of the ability to fulfill any threats that the organization makes. The organization’s use the appearance of absolute power to cause continued loyalty, adherence to extortion schemes and other activities, and to discourage witnesses, while the selective nature of fulfilling threats keeps law enforcement and the general public from taking notice of the organization. Organized crime also remains hidden from the public eye because the public and the government only focus on one aspect of organized crimes revenues, which allows the organizations to profit from a broad range of criminal activities even while the government or public attempt to stop the revenues from one source, making it very difficult for the government to stop organized crime from being a profitable business (Ruth 115). The criminal organizations have also followed in the footsteps of industrial corporations and have grown to encompass territory throughout the country. The

Organized crime is found in the United States of America today and the law enforcement agencies are trying to find a way to curb its existence. Even though there are illegal businesses associated with organized crime, they are mixed in with legal businesses to portray a legal front. It also can be called a social institution because it is led by a boss and follows a chain of command much like a pyramid. Empirical and speculative theories have been developed through the years in order for the law enforcement agencies to better understand organized crime and how to deal with it. This paper will examine a social institution as it applies to

Organized crime is often committed by highly controlled criminal groups that participate in illegal activities for financial benefits. Indeed, organized crimes terrorize multiple facets of the American nation, which include the US’ economy as well as national security. The FBI assigns the costs of organized crime globally at one trillion dollars per year.

Both terrorist and transnational organized criminal groups utilize illegal activities to further their agendas and increase their coffers. Some of the methods employed are: kidnapping, drug trafficking, and human trafficking. Recently these two groups have begun working together to accomplish their goals. There has been evidence that organized crime groups have provided logistical support to terrorists (Rollins & Wyler, 2013). The collaboration of these two groups strengthens both groups exponentially. But the organized crime groups, on most occasions, do not share the same ideological views as the terrorist groups. They are in it for the money, and sometimes the risk of working with terrorists is too high.

This website show the relationship it has with chapter 1 of our reading. It explains that there is no define definition to organized crime. They relate this to the fast development of organizations and the changing of their methods of conducting their business. Internationally they struggle to define what crimes are to be considered to be organized crime. The reason that this hinders the process of defining organizations and the crime they are is that the data is hard to compare with so many different definitions. The international data is also tainted because of the difference of judicial systems, and the difference the police register the methods of the crime. The police and courts need to have a

Organized crime is either violent or non-violent in nature, and is generally committed for profit by a group of people with a ranked structure. Organized crimes include such crimes as racketeering, robbery, theft, drug dealing, and humans for prostitution and some may have a legal business to launder the illegal profits received.

The criminal justice system is far more powerful than the criminal offender, and is generally uncorrupted by the latter. There is a notion that crime is basically the actions of powerless petty criminals and that the state is incorruptible. However, organized crime presents a different scenario: the powerful criminal. The dynamics of petty crime are, to an extent, reversed. In other words, the offender may be more powerful than the criminal justice system. Power may take the form of evasive skills - disguise and sanctuary for activities such as money laundering. It may take the form of coercion and corruption of both the public and members of criminal justice agencies.

The traditional organized crime activity that poses the greatest threat to me personally is violence and being used as commodity during the commission of a criminal exchange. Groups such as motorcycle gangs, have traditional characteristics such as money laundering, drugs and weapon trafficking and supplying strippers and prostitutes. They may also use violence to execute their criminal activities. An

Social Disorganization, the Criteria for Organized Crime and its Varying Relationships Among the criteria that sets how organized crime operates that can be related with social disorganization are as follows: 1) lack of political systems or aims; 2) hierarchal power or authority; 3) “exclusive membership;” 4) continuous operations; 5) use of violence, when necessary; 6) monopolistic control; and 7) compliance with certain rules or governing policies (Lampe, n.d). It is important to note the similarities of socially-disorganized communities with how organized crime operates. The similarities in criteria can easily enable advocates of organized crime to establish relationships and collaborate with authorities and high officials of a certain community.

Criminal gangs are there to rule, they have been there in every community for a long time. Gang's intentions are to commit crimes. Gang leaders oversee extortion, order killings or smuggle drugs. This paper studies gang formation, why individuals join gangs and the negative influence gangs have to the society and the economy. The study focuses on some of the prominent gangs in the world today; it explains the activities of the Russian mafia and other gangs. This paper explains power struggles within gangs and gives out recommendations to solve problems associated with gang operations. This paper puts into perspective a study on factors influencing gang membership; the study employs personal interviews as a method, causal research design and ordinal scale of measurement. Prisoners in California state prison are the sample population. Structured proxy question are used, and observation to study an individual's race. The study focuses male prison gang members. Findings from the study indicate that the less educated an individual is the likely for one join a gang, from the study it is evident that gang members feel disregarded when formulating policies, it is clear that race is not a factor to gang membership and that most of the gang members come from dysfunctional families.

The term organization must satisfy certain criteria put down by an ICC Pre-Trial Chamber, the organization must have a hierarchy of command, possess the means to carry out a widespread or systematic attack, exercises control over a part of the territory of a State, and has criminal activities against a civilian population as a purpose. In Minora, the drug cartels are said to be well organized and have authority throughout the Minora country with the help of local police.Their criminal activities have brought violence to the country with victims being both rivals of member gangs and ordinary citizens. The drug cartels also use military weapons such as automatic weapons and grenade launchers that are used to attack the government forces.

Treverton et all define crime and terrorism as illegal activities which greatly revolve around economic interests. The document accurately depicts how ‘organized crime seeks money and why terrorism needs it’ . Furthermore, according to the authors, the definitions about crime presented by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), United Nations (UN), and the International Police (INTERPOL) coincide in some terms regarding the essence of organized crime. All of the aforementioned identify key words within their definitions such as groups of individuals working under illegal structures with profitable aims.

Basic models of organized crimes include, youth and street gang, corporate organization, patron and client network, multimodal approach model and individual difference model. Patron- client produce crime groups that function a small units within the overall structure. These networks are normally made up of, hierarchies, personalized activities such as family rivalry, recruiting and training one family members with their major belief system relying on their family values, religion and tradition.