Mass Criminalization of Society - Essay Example

Organized crime is one of the global forms of criminal behavior and mass criminalization of society. Before reading the book, I perceived organized crime as the controlled behavior of a group of individuals aimed to steal money and sell drugs and arms. The stresses of a disorganized society weaken the inhibitions that might keep many from delinquency. Movies, radio, the theater, and newspapers are indirect reflections of real life. Though, when an unstable character looks around and finds fixing corruption, and graft, his ideas and attitudes must be affected. Organized group life affords an accretion of strength. No wonder that the same device which socially is a help may bring about new social trouble when groups clash with groups, or when minor units, families, crowds, or neighborhoods run counter to the demands of the supreme unit, the state. It is not always easy to reconcile conflicting codes and loyalties.

            The reading suggests that organized crime can be explained as illegal activities aimed to gain financial profits with the help of unlawful actions of the disciple; Ned groups of people.  The code is acknowledged and the state sets its categorical claims aside. Again group loyalty is permitted to assume the first place. Organized crime group life and structure are subject to other forces which do not stand still. They are deeply affected by technological innovations, the machine age, the age of birth control, and the age of ideologies. Through the medium of nascent and dying units, all these basic factors of human development and reversion bear on criminal behavior. A group comes into existence when at least one other person enters into relations with a given individual. Organized crime life presupposes interaction. The contact should therefore be not completely ephemeral or one-sided. A passer-by who happens to be knocked down in a dark street does not form a unit with the robber. He may be drunk and scarcely aware of the aggressor. He may even fight back. In no case has a group been set up. Yet there can be beginnings of organized crime with the policeman on his regular beat, with the boss, with a teacher, or a priest. Imaginary partners and a person's sincere belief may constitute a social unit, fanciful, it is true, but operative (Lunde and Morton 2004).

In general, organized crime groups require some continuity, intimacy, and emotional content. There are certainly group relations between father and son, between two friends, two lovers. Hate and fear are not group-preventing when compulsive nearness in a prison, in an office, or a neighborhood establishes a contact that otherwise would be avoided. Such units, of course, by necessity live on compromises, private nonaggression pacts, and methods of cooperation.

Yet they may have a bearing on both partners' behavior. The "good" prisoner and the warden often live for years in the interdependence of this relationship and act accordingly. Much more often we think of a plurality of persons when we speak of social units. But the simple aggregate is not yet a group sociologically. It does not matter that they meet by chance in a certain square or room. This is just a multitude. But as soon as they go into the streets to show their love or their hate for the same man or the same cause a metamorphosis has taken place. For a short time at least they have fallen in line psychologically; among all the remaining disparities one identity has made its appearance, which takes command of the multitude and suddenly makes it one, "unum," an organized crime unit. The permanence of these groups does not mean that behind their rigid structure individuals do not come and go. Young people leave their families and set up their own homes. In a highly competitive world, Organized crime groups are designed to substitute for individual competition. The strength of the organized crime unit consists in eliminating any intergroup competition and in reducing exploitation as far as the unit is concerned. At least it can be said that the ordinary competitive and exploitative processes are modified (Lunde and Morton 2004).

The main characteristics associated with organized crime are illegal activity, criminal behavior, violence and aggression, actions and attacks against rich people, drug and arms trafficking, prostitution, and human trafficking. Wherever critics look social groupings operate certain combative attitudes that would hamper the specific crime group activities are tabooed. Peculiar codes of organized crime try to secure this internal peace. That these sets of rules may conflict with the general morality or the laws of the state and thus play a certain criminal role is obvious. Some crime groups uphold the necessity of a duel under given conditions and enforce their will by threatening to expel the reluctant member. They thus keep him in line, since the punishment they can mete out far surpasses the mild penalty of the state. The criminal group requires the most powerful automobiles, the most perfect psychology, the greatest discipline, and the most inviolate moral code. Depending on your age, sex, socioeconomic status, and other factors, you may be much less likely to be victimized than these figures indicate (Lunde and Morton 2004). For example, when you leave your sweater lying on a park bench and someone walks off with it, that may become an official crime--theft