Growing Criminal Law Special Issues - Assignment Example

Growing Criminal Law Special Issues The U.S. Department of Justice (2011) notes, there is need of urgency in addressing growing criminal special issues. The department observes that most public opinion polls rank crime and fear of crime as one of the most important issues that need to be addressed. Racketeering is one of the special crimes and is becoming a growing issue in criminal law; it’s part of organized crime whose main aim is to entrench continual patronage (Eskridge, 2010). Administrators and public policymakers in the criminal justice system are paying more attention to this growing issue in the criminal law and its complexity.

There is need for traditional criminal justice system to undergo fundamental rethinking that aims at responding appropriately to this growing criminal law issue. Therefore, criminal justice policies such as community corrections, policing, imprisonment, sentencing, and adjudication needs to be changed in significant way to respond to these emerging special issue in criminal law (Neese, 2003). . First it is important to understand how RICO criminal defense practice came about. This practice emerged as a result of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act which was passed by the Congress in 1970 Blakey (2008).

The Act was appropriate at that time as the Congress was seeking to eliminate the adverse consequences of organized crime on the economy of the United States. Since then, the Act has been expanded to include several other procedures of crime. Neese (2003) notes that the Act plays critical role in enabling the federal government in fighting international and national dimensions of organized crime such as racketeering. The fact that organized crimes and racketeering in particular is a threat to public safety cannot be disputed.

That is why for over the years particularly in the 1970s and the early 1980s, the RICO criminal defense practice has been performing relatively well (Blakey, 2008). However, it has been noted that in the most recent of times the performance of this practice has declined considerably. Anderson and Jackson (2004) argue that this decline is highly attributed to the effort that the United States government is putting to crack down on organized crimes. In particular, the government has focused on two main areas in its fight against these crimes; business that are employing individuals who are not legally allowed to work in the United states and focus on illegal immigrants who are engaging in organized crimes. The U.S.

Department of Justice (2011) notes that organized crimes such as those covered in the RICO Act are being perpetrated by the immigrants especially from Russia thus undermining creation of the rule of law efforts. This explains the reason why the fight against organized crimes has