Controlling Organized Crime - Research Paper Example

3). Apparently, organized crimes raise a number of issues to the American society. Organized criminal groups have taken steep root that they even influence the media, win votes in the election, and influence and use officers who are in charge of law and order. In a democratic government, sometimes the political leaders also become the key elements in such organizations by providing as much support to the members. When such criminals get into the political institutions, the entire political system gradually becomes undercut, and nobody gets benefited from it except those schemers and manipulators.

The money that is derived from the organized crime is so huge that can create a parallel economy in the country. Once this situation continues longer, country’s economy may suffer from inflation and price hikes. The illegal supply of arms can cause subversive activities and subsequently a kind of chaos unless the scenario becomes under control. Altogether, organized crime is a potential threat that can raise numerous challenges to a nation’s existence. According to Shelley (2002), today terrorism and transnational crime are the two central threats to our national and international safety.

According to the author the linkage between the two is highly evident, for both use the similar mean to exploit the modern technology, use the same operators and same systems to move their fund, maintain a good network, and involve in crime in order to meet fund for their activities. Organized crime is the main source of income for the modern terrorist groups. They always want to conceal the source of money. As Schmid (2006) points out, according to the general concept, terrorism is aiming at certain changes in the political scenario; whereas organized crime looks at fiscal benefits through the illegal means (p.3). Admittedly, the author’s findings on terrorism seem rather weak in the present global scenario because the real objective of the modern terror organizations is ambiguous.

However, the aim of the organized crime is explicitly monetary profit. Yet to make their task easy, as Forest (2007, p. 116) points out, they often involve in combined venture with the terrorists especially in international trade and trafficking of drugs and weapons. Admittedly, despite the genuine efforts made to address the over presence of the illegal organizations in the US, organized crime has been becoming one of the leading threats to the federal law enforcement officials for the past few decades.

The major advantage the transnational criminals enjoy is that there are no universally accepted measures to fight the organized crime. The organized crime is so powerful enough to influence the industrial sectors and even the economy of many of the developed countries. Berdal and Serrano (2002) put forward a good example for this. According to them, the legal industries rely on the precursor chemicals in large quantities for the cocaine and heroin processing; and attempting to restrict these chemicals can hinder legal trade and have been resisted by the chemical manufactures in the US and Europe (p.43). Effective prosecution often becomes difficult once the culprits are the members of the political institutions or because of the technical skills they possess when compared