Western Hemisphere: TOC networks—including transnational gangs—have expanded and matured, threatening the security of citizens and the stability of governments throughout the region, with direct security implications for the United States. Central America is a key area of converging threats where illicit trafficking in drugs, people, and weapons—as well as other revenue streams—fuel increased instability. Transnational crime and its accompanying violence are threatening the prosperity of some Central American states and can cost up to eight percent of their gross domestic product, according to the World Bank.
The Government of Mexico is waging an historic campaign against transnational criminal organizations, many of which are expanding beyond drug trafficking into human smuggling and trafficking, weapons smuggling, bulk cash smuggling, extortion, and kidnapping for ransom. TOC in Mexico makes the U. Farther south, Colombia has achieved remarkable success in reducing cocaine production and countering illegal armed groups, such as the FARC, that engage in TOC.
Yet, with the decline of these organizations, new groups are emerging such as criminal bands known in Spanish as Bandas Criminales, or Bacrims.
After years of intensive capacity building assistance in Colombia, the United States is working to transfer financial and operational responsibility for institutional development to the Government of Colombia. This reality is the result of the success of U. The insurgency is seen in some areas of Afghanistan as criminally driven—as opposed to ideologically motivated—and in some areas, according to local Afghan officials and U.
In other instances, ideologically driven insurgent networks are either directly trafficking in narcotics or have linked up with DTOs to finance their criminal actions. Russian organized crime syndicates and criminally linked oligarchs may attempt to collude with state or state-allied actors to undermine competition in strategic markets such as gas, oil, aluminum, and precious metals.
At the same time, TOC networks in the region are establishing new ties to global drug trafficking networks. Nuclear material trafficking is an especially prominent concern in the former Soviet Union.
The United States will continue to cooperate with Russia and the nations of the region to combat illicit drugs and TOC. The Balkans: A traditional conduit for smuggling between east and west, the Balkans has become an ideal environment for the cultivation and expansion of TOC.
Weak institutions in Albania, Kosovo, and Bosnia and Herzegovina have enabled Balkan-based TOC groups to seize control of key drug and human trafficking routes and Western European markets. The Balkans region has become a new entry point for Latin American cocaine, a source of synthetic drugs, and a transit region for heroin chemical precursors for use in the Caucasus and Afghanistan. Excess weapons are smuggled to countries of concern.
Insufficient border controls and the ease of acquiring passports enable the transit of criminals and terrorist figures to Western Europe. Cooperation between the United States and the European Union, as well as bilateral cooperation with the countries in the region to foster legal institution building, economic progress, and good governance in the Balkans will be key to eliminating the environment supporting TOC.
It has also become both a source of—and transit point for—methamphetamine destined for the Far East. West Africa also serves as a transit route for illicit proceeds flowing back to source countries.
Permissions Icon Permissions. Abstract There is increasing international concern about the growth of organized crime in Africa. All rights reserved. Issue Section:. You do not currently have access to this article.
Download all slides. Comments 0. Add comment Close comment form modal. I agree to the terms and conditions. You must accept the terms and conditions. Add comment Cancel. Submit a comment. Comment title. You have entered an invalid code. Submit Cancel. Lupsha, My perspective is that organized crime is a process - an activity possessing certain attributes and characteristics.
As such it cannot be identified with any single temporal starting point. From this perspective the key conceptual attributes of organized crime are: - Ongoing interaction by a group of individuals over time: - Patterns in that interaction: role, status, and specialization.
Lupsha in: Kelly , 33 organized crime in the US 1 is not some random or episodic thing; but a patterned and structured activity; 2 44 finds and exploits opportunities for illicit gain; and 3 operates across time regardless of individual changes in personnel or leadership. Lupsha in: Kelly, Maltz, Michael back to index Many definitions have been proposed for 'organized crime'. For the purposes of this discussion we will consider it to be the criminal and other unlawful activities of large, continuing, multi-enterprise organizations that were established primarily for criminal purposes, and that employ corruption and violence in their activities.
Maltz, 24 McCulloch, William back to index Organized crime The families are organized along military lines and receive general guidance from a select group of family bosses called the commission. William McCulloch in: U. Michalowski , Missouri Task Force back to index Organized crime has been defined as a selfperpetuaing criminal conspiracy for power and profit, utilizing fear and corruption and seeking to obtain immunity from the law. While the organized crime syndicate is certainly the largest and best known organized criminal element, it is by no means the only one.
There are local organizations throughout the nation that would certainly fall within the definition of organized crime. These groups, numerous and varied, may be based upon the ethnic or racial ties or be simply the result of a particular criminal endeavor. Missouri Task Force on Organized Crime, National Advisory Committee back to index Organized crime is not synonymous with the Mafia or la Cosa Nostra, the most experienced, diversified, and possibly best disciplined of the conspiratorial groups.
The Mafia image is a common stereotype of organized crime members. Although a number of families of La Cosa Nostra are an important component of organized crime operations, they do not enjoy a monopoly on underworld activities. Today, a variety of groups is engaged in organized criminal activity. National Advisory Committee , 8 New Mexico's OC Commission back to index When a criminal organization, because of its sophistication or size, eludes the control of local law enforcement, it has entered what may be considered the area of organized crime in New Mexico.
This is the practical lower limit of the term; the upper limit is well known and includes the infamous Mafia and La Cosa Nostra, which operate on an international basis. New Mexico's Governor's Organized Crime Prevention Commission , Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act back to index 'Organized crime' means the unlawful activities of the members of a highly organized, disciplined association engaged in supplying illegal goods and services, including but not limited to gambling, prostitution, loan sharking, narcotics, labor racketeering, and other unlawful activities of members of such organizations.
Despite personnel changes, the conspiratorial entity continues. Combating Organized Crime , 19 Poff, Richard back to index It is something of an oversimplification, but broadly speaking, crime can be categorized in two major compartments: One, organized crime; and the other, disorganized crime. Richard Poff in: U.
House of Representatives , 80 Potter, Gary back to index For purposes of this discussion, we shall define organized crime, following Block and Chambliss , as the management and coordination of illegal enterprises connected with vice gambling, prostitution, high-interest personal loans, pornography, and drug trafficking , and racketeering labor and business extortion.
Potter , President's Commission on Organized Crime, back to index Organized crime is an industry that is dependent upon effective coordination of its two components, the "criminal group" and the "buffer".
The criminal group in its various manifestations, "cartel," "corporation," "family," "gumi," "triad," etc. Thus, the six characteristics of the criminal group are continuity, structure, defined membership, criminality, violence, and power as its goal. The buffer is the criminal group's protection from the criminal justice system. The buffer protects the criminal group from effective prosecution through the efforts of corrupt judges, attorneys, law enforcement officers, politicians, financial advisors, financial institutions, gaming establishments, and other businesses both in the United States and abroad.
In addition to the direct activities of organized crime, there are indirect or support activities that assist organized crime. Individuals that provide support may include those who are working for a particular criminal group while waiting for the opportunity to become members of the group. How long a period is obviously a matter of judgment. My own inclination is to stress the ability to handle a generational change of leadership, since that suggests that the gang itself has acquired a value independent of that associated with the reputation of its most prominent member.
Reuter , 96 Reuter and Rubinstein back to index But despite strong differences about specifics, there is a consensus about the general characteristics of this social threat.
Organized crime is viewed as a set of stable, hierarchically organized gangs which, through violence or its credible threat, have acquired monopoly control of certain major illegal markets. This control has produced enormous profits, which have been used to bribe public officials, thus further protecting the monopolies. These funds have also been invested in acquiring legitimate businesses in which the racketeers continue to use extortion and threats to minimize competition. Reuter and Rubinstein , 46 Rhodes, Robert back to index Organized crime consists of a series of illegal transactions between multiple offenders, some of whom employ specialized skills, over a continuous period of time, for purposes of economic advantage, and political power when necessary to gain economic advantage.
Normally, but not always, techniques of bribery, intimidation, and violence are used and hegemony over services sought Rhodes , 4. Ryan, Patrick J. Organized crime once meant the Mafia, but today it is much more. Organized crime is large-scale criminal activity, operated by big organizations with complex hierarchies. Although the activities of organized crime remain fairly similar, the people involved have changed radically.
No longer is organized crime the work of one ethnic group. No longer does organized crime operate more or less locally.
Like legitimate big business, organized crime has gone international. Ryan, , 1 Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department Organized Crime Intelligence Bureau back to index Many people confuse the term "organized crime," with the criminal enterprise commonly known as "the Mafia. Illegal enterprises and vice operations such as gambling, narcotics, fraud, public corruption, prostitution, pornography, murder for hire, unlawful labor union tactics, outlaw motorcycle gangs, terrorists, liquor law violators, and many other crimes may, depending upon the degree of organization, be included under the umbrella term, "organized crime.
Salerno and Tompkins , Schelling, Thomas C. The characteristic is exclusivity , or, to use a more focused term, monopoly. From all accounts, organized crime does not merely extend itself broadly, but brooks no competition. It seeks not merely influence, but exclusive influence.
In the overworld its counterpart would be not just organized business, but monopoly. And we can apply to it some of the adjectives that are often associated with monopoly - ruthless, unscrupulous, greedy, exploitative, unprincipled. It is when a gang of burglars begins to police their territory against the invasion of other gangs of burglars, and makes interloping burglars join up and share their loot or get out of town, and collectively negotiates with the police not only for their own security but to enlist the police in the war against rival burglar gangs or nonjoining mavericks, that we should, I believe, begin to identify the burglary gang as organized crime.
Schelling , Sellin, Thorsten back to index "organized crime" has come to be synonymous with economic enterprises organized for the purpose of conducting illegal activities and which, when they operate legitimate ventures, do so by illegal methods.
They have arisen for the chief purpose of catering to our vices-gambling, drinking, sex, narcotics-which our laws do not tolerate, and they have found many other colleteral ways of gaining illegitimate profits. Sellin , 13 Shieh, Shawn back to index Shieh, 70 Siegel, Larry back to index Siegel , Smith, Dwight C.
Very simply: by not looking for organized crime itself. As a contrived concept, at least in contemporary usage, it does not possess its own logic, but requires interpretation from a variety of viewpoints. The question is not: "What is organized crime? They represent, in virtually every instance, an extension of a legitimate market spectrum into areas normally proscribed.
Their separate strengths derive from the same fundamental considerations that govern entrepreneurship in the legitimate marketplace. The behavior patterns that have generally focused attention on criminality rather than entrepreneurship reflect the dynamics of the illicit marketplace I mean by 'illicit enterprise' the extension of legitimate market activities into areas normally proscribed, for the pursuit of profit and in response to latent illicit demand.
Smith, The primary issue remains: What theoretical base will provide the best approach to either white-collar or organized crime, or both? The answer to be examined here is the concept that enterprise, not crime, is the governing characteristic of both phenomena, and that their criminal aspects are best understood when we recognize that enterprise takes place across a spectrum of legitimacy.
Smith, A spectrum-based theory of enterprise enables us to see that organized crime and the crimes of business are the results of the process by which political that is, value-based constraints are placed on economic activity. Smith, 33 Swain, Tylor back to index The definition of organized crime - A group of individuals or organization engaging in criminal activity for the purpose of procuring tangible, political, or ideological gain.
Many people see organized crime as the notorious mafias of New York or Los Angeles; this definition is correct but leaves out a very large aspect of the definition. The truth is that organized crime does exist in you town and city in the forms of gangs, corporate criminal organizations, cyber crime and even possibly ideological crime and terrorism.
It involves thousands of criminals, working within structures as complex as those of any large corporation, subject to laws more rigidly enforced than those of legitimate governments. Its actions are not impulsive but rather the result of intricate conspiracies, carried on over many years and aimed at gaining control over whole fields of activity in order to amass huge profits. The core of organized crime activity is the supplying of illegal goods and services Today the core of organized crime in the United States consists of 24 groups operating as criminal cartels in large cities across the Nation.
Their membership is exclusively men of Italian descent, they are in frequent communication with each other, and their smooth functioning is insured by a national body of overseers. To date, only the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been able to document fully the national scope of these groups, and FBI intelligence indicates that the organization as a whole has changed its name from Mafia to La Cosa Nostra.
Task Force Report , 1, 6 Tennessee Code Annotated back to index For the purposes of this section, "organized crime" is defined as the unlawful activities of the members of an organized, disciplined association engaged in supplying illegal goods and services, including, but not limited to, gambling, prostitution, loan sharking, narcotics, labor racketeering, and other unlawful activities of members of such organizations.
Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General back to index Organized crime is defined as activities carried out by groups with a formalized structure whose primary objective is to obtain money through illegal activities. Department of Labor, 48 U. House of Representatives back to index Organized crime is a term of many meanings. It can be used to refer to the crimes committed by organized criminal groups--gambling, narcotics, loan-sharking, theft and fencing, and the like.
It can also be used to refer to the criminal group that commit those crimes. Here, a distinction may be drawn between an organized crime enterprise that engages in providing illicit goods and services and an organized crime syndicate that regulates relations between individual enterprises--allocating territory, settling personal disputes, establishing gambling payoffs, etc.
Syndicates, too, are of different types. They may be metropolitan, regional, national or international in scope; they may be limited to one field of endeavor--for example, narcotics- or they may cover a broad range of illicit activities. Often, but not always, the term organized crime refers to a particular organized crime syndicate, variously known as the Mafia or La Cosa Nostra, and it is in this sense that the committee has used the phrase.
This organized crime syndicate was the principal target of the committee investigation. Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.
Sess; RCW They range from simple lists of characteristics to more complex formulations that distinguish between necessary and sufficient conditions and ancillary features. This chapter takes organized crime very simply to be a continuation of business by criminal means. The implication is that we can expect to see in the criminal world the same kind of profit-seeking behavior-and the same kind of instruments and mechanisms-that we see in the world of legal business.
Williams, , 68 Organized crime can be understood as both entity and activity. The entities are criminal groups or enterprises which are increasingly transnational in scope and ambition. Organized crime can also be understood as a set of methodologies available to other actors - armed factions or insurgencies, terrorist networks, or rogue regimes. Winslow and Zhang, Definitions of organized crime from other countries: Australia: Briggs, Gavin back to index Organised crime is a structure that includes two or more people whose purpose is to commit one or more serious crimes or offences for financial gain or material benefit.
Briggs , 1 Australia: Clark, Mark back to index Organised crime consists of illegitimate loci of social power, from within a religious, ethnic, industrial or other minority class or group in a society, that have acquired and utilise the knowledge of coercion, compensation and persuasion in a systematic manner to perpetuate or protect their organisations and to gain advantage by acts of criminal victimisation in local, national and transnational environments.
The definition encapsulates the key elements of organised crime and provides a yardstick to identify what is or is not organised crime. Crime groups that do not fit the definition are probably more correctly identified as gangs. This does not imply that they cannot inflict considerable social damage on a community; it merely delineates their boundaries. The critical issue for gangs is whether they can mutate into organised crime in a manner similar to what occurred in Nazi Germany.
Clark Australia: O'Malley, Pat back to index Organized crime is defined as "those illegal activities involving the management and coordination of racketeering and vice". The source of this definition would appear to be traditional definitions by politicians, police and bourgeois criminologists rather than Marxist theory. O'Malley , 83 Australia: Queensland Crime Commission and Queensland Police Service back to index The Police Powers and Responsibilities Act , which governs the activities of QPS officers, defines organised crime as: 'an ongoing criminal enterprise to commit serious indictable offences in a systematic way involving a number of people and substantial planning and organisation.
The Crime Commission Act characterises organised crime as criminal activity involving: 'indictable offences punishable upon conviction by a term of imprisonment of not less than seven years, two or more persons, substantial planning and organisation or systematic and continuing activity, and a purpose to obtain profit, gain, power or influence'. Victoria Police Organised Crime Squad website - retr. The methodical perpetration of offences taht, each separately or collectively, have a considerable impact, for reasons of profit or power; 2.
By more than two persons acting together; 3. For a prolonged or indefinite period of time; 4. With a division of tasks, in which they a.
As has been noted elsewhere regarding the Bundeskriminalamt BKA definition, upon which the Belgian operational definition is based, such a standard sets wide and potentially unclear parameters within which organised criminal acitvity can be detected. Black et al. In any case, there is no doubt that one is dealing with a set of activities spread in networks that have components of economic endeavour, that is, it needs repetitive activities, though without the discipline, regularity and rights of regular work , a goal of which is profit easier and higher the better at the wholesale networks , using variable methods and currencies for exchanges typical of underground relationships.
Zaluar, Canada: Beare, Margaret back to index Organized crime is a process or method of committing crimes, not a distinct type of crime in itself. Beare, Canada: Desroches, Frederick back to index Although there is no agreed upon definition of organized crime, in recent years a consensus seems to have emerged amongst criminologists that organized crime is a criminal conspiracy of several persons motivated for the purpose of economic enrichment.
Desroches, Canada: Nathanson Center back to index The term "organized crime" most accurately refers to the process by, or the manner in which, crimes are committed. Effective strategies for addressing organized crime must take account of its variety. Some criminal operations are tightly interwoven into the fabric of the society in which they operate, and their impact hidden.
Organized criminal activity within particular cultural groups may be difficult to detect without in-depth understanding of the culture. Corruption and influence peddling operations may be highly sophisticated and hidden from public view. Other criminal organizations, operating as outsiders, are more likely to rely on violence to facilitate their illegal operations. Since their violence more often erupts into the public domain, sometimes in a seemingly random manner, sometimes directed at competing criminal operations, they tend to be more visible as a public threat.
Nathanson Center website Canada: Porteous, Samuel back to index Some prefer to limit the concept of OC within the boundaries of a model organization with a specific type of organizational structure engaged in a fixed set of activities.
This study takes a different approach. There is increasing evidence that some of the more familiar OC groups and many of the so-called "emerging" OC groups stubbornly refuse to confine their behaviour to any "standard" list of OC activities or to adhere to any "prescribed" organizational structure. This study sides with those who feel that OC, in order to reflect the realitiy of modern criminal behaviour, is best defined broadly. The conclusion from the above should not be that organized crime is really not that organized: rather, it acknowledges that many OC groups tend not to have centrally controlled rigid organizational structures.
An OC activity can be highly organized despite the fact that those engaged in the activity are acting in fluid groups and alliances.
Recognizing economic or "white collar" crime as a significant OC activity acknowledges that organized criminal activity is not confined to traditional "Mafia" or visible and ethnic minorities. Organized crime encompasses any organized profit-motivated criminal activities that have a serious impact. Porteous, , 10 Canada: Schulte-Bockholt, Alfried back to index Organized crime is identified here as a group generally operating under some form of concealment with a structure reflective of the cultural and social stipulations of the societies that generate it; and which has the primary objective to obtain access to wealth and power through the participation in economic activities prohibited by state law.
Definition of Crime Prevention 2. Key Crime Prevention Typologies 2. Crime Problem-Solving Approaches 4. Identifying the Need for Legal Aid 3. Models for Delivering Legal Aid Services 7. Roles and Responsibilities of Legal Aid Providers 8. Legal Framework 3. Use of Firearms 5. Protection of Especially Vulnerable Groups 7.
Aims and Significance of Alternatives to Imprisonment 2. Justifying Punishment in the Community 3. Pretrial Alternatives 4. Post Trial Alternatives 5.
Concept, Values and Origin of Restorative Justice 2. Overview of Restorative Justice Processes 3. How Cost Effective is Restorative Justice?
0コメント