The Study of Organized Crime - Essay Example

Kamran Harris Criminology 26 December 2007 Crime in Context Introduction: crime in its many forms has been an area of research and study in different academic disciplines for a long time. The most orderly structured and complex form of crime is termed as organised crime, and it has been a field of interest for many scholars and researchers hailing from varied fields of scientific and sociological studies. Perhaps the most advanced form of crime to be studied is organised crime, which has, over the course of the past three decades (Klaus von Lampe 2006), become a category unto itself, to be studied as a separate branch of criminology. What is interesting about this form of crime is that, due to its sheer effects and implications on many other fields of studies, it is no longer viewed just as a part of criminology, or not even just as sociology, but is also involved in other fields like economic, anthropology, law political science and history (Klaus von Lampe 2006). Suffice it to say that it has become a discipline itself, and is studied as a separate and special field of study, having its own literature and figures for study and analysis. Academic sources are drawn from all sorts of fields, and likewise, it has influenced many areas of national and international interaction, especially with the advancement in modern technology (Fiorentini, G & Peltzman, S. 1995). This paper aims at laying down a foundation to the study of organised crime, touching upon its many definitions and theories, its types and their effects on modern as well as historic human societies, and methods and procedures to regulate and control the spread and effects of operations that have been established as organised crime. Definitions: during the study of crime over the past decades, it has proven very hard to come up with a single, universally accepted definition of organised crime, owing to its nature. The term organised crime was first coined by the Chicago Crime Commission in 1919 (Concept and Theory of Organised Crime in the USA 1999). Since then, this type of crime has taken up different forms and methodologies, depending upon the time in history, the places and cultures associated with it, and the effects it has as a result of the criminal activities of its doers. There is no one crime type that can be labeled as organised crime (Donald R. 1972). However, whatever the scenario, there are certain basic underlying characteristics that are true to all its forms. Broadly speaking, organised crime can be defined as the activities and operations undertaken by a group of criminals who have a hierarchically structured party, monetary acquisitions and funding, and political influences and backup to support their varied interests, involving a rampant use of violence to protect those interests (Wikipedia 2007). In short, as defined by the US Organised Crime Control Act of 1970, organized crime is "The unlawful activities of ... a highly organised, disciplined association...". Studying the various definitions of organised crime is in effect studying the different natures and perspectives in which this type of crime occurs, because each incident in itself has the potential to mold how organised crime is viewed and how it can be controlled. Different sources, according to the kind of facts and figures and data they have collected during their study, put forward different aspects of the crime. One form of the crime could be for supplying goods and services to the illegal markets (Peter Gill 2006). Another form of the crime could reveal the characteristics of the orthodox organizations when performing criminal activities (Giddens, Duneier, Appelbaum 2005). Yet another definition could reveal the usual purpose behind such organised crimes, as mentioned by Paul Nesbitt, the Head of Organized Crime Group, whose definition is endorsed by Interpol, as he describes organised crime as "Any group having a corporate structure whose primary objective is to obtain money through illegal activities, often surviving on fear and corruption." (Bresler 1993: 319). Here it becomes apparent that organised crimes and organised crime groups are often synonymously treated. In fact, this is an important approach in studying this crime field. Owing to its undetermined nature, and the hordes of theories and definitions that aim to define this term, it is often necessary to break it down into several branches, involving studying the structures, workings and dynamics of the criminal organisations themselves and examining their social, political and economic effects, in order to determine the nature and scope of the type of organised crime prevalent in the pertinent society (Concept and Theory of Organised Crime in the USA 1999). Modern Organised Crimes: with the advancement in technology has risen a new form of organised crime, which might be termed as global organised crime operations. Historically, crime groups have acted independently to each other, often engaging in wars and fights among each other to gain superiority and monopoly. This meant that each crime group had its own restricted area to work in, and it operated locally, or as in the case of a few large organisations like the Russian Mafia and the Irish Mob, nationally. It was very difficult to operate on cross-bounder operations, and human trafficking was still yet abated (Donald R. 1972). However, the phenomenon of globalisation has transformed the way crime group organize and behave. It has been made easier for them to cross borders, resulting in an increased amount and growth of human trafficking. The use of the Internet has enabled groups to operate worldwide, often entirely remotely (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2007). This means that it has become increasingly difficult for the regulatory authorities to curb such criminal activities, as these authorities normally operate on national levels (Wikipedia 2007). These groups have realised that working in co-operation is much more beneficial these days than working individually, and many now work in association with each other. For instance, the Sicilian Mafia in the US has worked together with criminal groups from Italy such as the Camorra, the 'Ndrangheta, and the Sacra Corona Unita (Stille A. 1996). Their co-operation does pay off; according to the FBI, these global operations generate about $1 trillion for these criminal groups every year (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2007). These criminal groups are involved in various crimes other than and including human trafficking, that has been established as the worst form of crime, such as prostitution, terrorism, extortion, drug trafficking, prison break, abduction, black marketeering, political corruption and violence, fraud, hijacking, money laundering, murder for hire, insider trading, racist and religiously motivated violence, and other crimes against humanity (Sage Passas N. 1995). The popular crimes for organised groups include, as they are called in the street language, bust-outs, pump and dump scams, and thefts for chop shops, which are, bankruptcy frauds, stock frauds, and stealing cars for dismantling, respectively (Wikipedia 2007). The occurrence of these crimes by specific organisations has led to the term criminal organisations as described in human rights law. This means that any individual associated with an organization that has been established as criminal need not be sentenced for a trial on his individual activities to be imprisoned; his mere association with those organisations is enough to convict him as guilty (Wikipedia 2007). Genocide: to better understand the concept of organised crime, its history, the different theories and disciplines that form a part of its study, and the methods of its regulation and prevention, it is beneficial to focus on one criminal activity associated with organised crime, so that a case study could be carried out. For this reason, genocide has been chosen as the operation carried out by criminal groups. The term genocide was first coined by a Polish-Jewish legal scholar, Rapheal Lemkin, in 1943 (Wikipedia 2007). After the large scale massacre of Assyrians in Iraq on 11 August 1933, following the killing of Armenians during World War I, when Lemkin proposed the term genocide in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, his idea that genocide is a crime under international law was unanimously accepted by the legal authorities worldwide (Wikipedia 2007). Again, there is no precise definition for the term genocide, but the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) in Article 2 puts forward a definition that is agreed upon as the legal definition, which states that "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group" (Wikipedia 2007). Genocide does not necessarily mean the complete and immediate destruction of any race or nationality, rather it is a gradual process by which systematic efforts are made to wipe off, in any community, any traces of cultural and linguistic, national, and religious feelings, and to instill in its people a sense of insecurity, terror, enslavement and deprivation from health and dignity, resulting in a social, moral, economic and political decay. This concept was explained by Lemkin in a draft resolution in 1943. Since then, many different incidences and criminal activities that occurred in history have been studied so that they can be classified into being genocidal or mere barbarous acts against human society, this has, however, proven to be an extremely difficult and controversial task, as proponents and opponents both have tried to mold the case in their favor, often twisting the very facts and foundations of those incidences. The most studied event in this regard has perhaps been the Holocaust, and, hence, under international law, efforts were made to put to justice the guilty during the Nuremberg Trials of 1945 to 1949. During the first of these trials, 24 of the top Nazi convicts were tried (Wikipedia 2007). Two other incidents of genocide are the genocide of former Yugoslavia from 1991, and the genocide of Rwanda in April 1994. More recently, the events in Darfur, Sudan, can be viewed as genocide, although the UN has gone back on its verdict of declaring them as genocide (Wikipedia 2007). Concepts and History: to determine the occurrence of organised crime, it is important to know the theories and concepts that have developed over the years for us to declare a crime as organised, as is apparent in the case of genocide. Different concepts have developed in history, and if we analyse the occurrence of the pertinent term, we find out that it has appeared intermittently during the 1960s and the mid 1980s, both in the US and in Germany, owing to the rampant criminal activities of that time, including genocide (Klaus von Lampe 1999). Evidence of this can be taken from the New York Times Index and the German magazine Der Spiegel. When studying the concepts, various classifications come into notice. Concepts dealing with a singular trait of these types of crimes focus on three grounds, which include the activity, structure or organisation and the system associated with the crimes (Klaus von Lampe 1999). Some categorise the operations based on the nature of the crimes committed, regardless of the group or the politico-social scenario. Others base their studies on the groups, and study all their activities, be that genocide or on a smaller level, drug trafficking. Those focusing on the system approach study the socio-political systems that are involved with these criminal groups and that invariably shape the types and scope of the crimes committed by these groups. There are multi-dimensional concepts, too, that take into account activities from the very basic to the national and system level, putting forward theories that tend to explain the whole functioning of the criminal system, its many groups, and criminal activities that those groups commit. Such an approach is very important when considering a situation for potential genocide. Regulation and Prevention: nations all over the world are trying to fight the menace of organised crime so that future incidents can be prevented. In the US, for instance, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has a laid down framework to fight this crime, involving co-operation nationwide as well as internationally to curb any threats to personal, national and international security. The basic points in the fight against organised crime include combating the groups within the available budget, tracking individuals who would lead the Bureau to the ringleaders so that the whole organisation could be brought down, fighting the local groups involved in racketeering, and ensuring that the criminal groups are crippled for good (Federal Investigation Bureau 2007). The Bureau is divided into three basic units, targeting the Asian, African, Italian and Middle Eastern criminal organisations. Each unit has field offices in its own specified location, and together with the help from headquarters, and other local, state and federal agencies, they work against the occurrence of organised crime in its many forms (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2007). Preventing organised crime is not a mean feat, especially in today's global world with its many easy opportunities for criminal activists to perform their operations, but the FBI has managed to achieve quite a number of regulatory and preventative successes. In 2005, hundreds of individuals associated with criminal groups were arrested, and 824 of them were convicted_ in the same year, 651 Italian and 468 Asian African pending cases were dealt with, along with other global issues regarding organised crime (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2007). Bibliography 2007. Books on Organized Crime. [Online]. Organized Crime Research. Available: http://www.organized-crime.de/revindex.htm. [26 December 2007]. 2007. Headline Archives. [Online]. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Available: http://www.fbi.gov/page2/page2index/ocd.htm. [26 December 2007]. 2007. Organized Crime Research. [Online]. Available: http://www.organized-crime.de/. [26 December 2007]. 22 November 2007. Organized Crime Links. [Online]. Organized Crime Research. Available: http://www.organized-crime.de/oclinx01.htm. [26 December 2007]. 22 December 2007. Organized Crime. [Online]. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organized_crime. [26 December 2007]. 23 December 2007. Genocide. [Online]. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide. [26 December 2007]. Bernstein, Lee. 2002. The Greatest Menace: Organized Crime in Cold War America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Corall H. 1998. Crime and Society in Britain. London: Longman. Definitions of Organized Crime. [Online]. Available: http://www.organized-crime.de/OCDEF1.htm. [26 December 2007]. Donald R. 1972. Criminal Organisation: its elementary forms. UK. Einstein, Stanley. Menachem, Amir. 1999. Organized Crime: Uncertainties and Dilemmas. Chicago: Office of International Criminal Justice. Fiorentini, G & Peltzman, S. 1995. The Economics of Organized Crime. Gardiner J. 1970. The Polotics of Corruption: Organized Crime in an Amercian City. US Publication. Giddens, Duneier, Appelbaum. 2005. Introduction to Sociology. US. Hobbs D. 1997. Professional and Organised crime in Britain in Maguire. Oxford: The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. Klaus von Lampe. 1999. Concept and Theory of Organized Crime in the USA. Vol. 67. Germany: Frankfurter kriminalwissenschaftliche Studien. Klaus von Lampe. 2006. The Interdisciplinary Dimensions of the Study of Organized Crime. Trends in Organized Crime, 9(3): 77-95. Klaus von Lampe. 6 October 1999. The Concept of Organized Crime in Historical Perspective. [Online]. Available: http://www.organized-crime.de/lauhtm01.htm. [26 December 2007]. Klaus von Lampe. 19 September 2003. The Use of Models in the Study of Organized Crime. The European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR). Lee J. 2002. Crime and Modernity. US. Organized Crime. [Online]. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Available: http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/orgcrime/aboutocs.htm. [26 December 2007]. Organized Crime and Federal Legislation. [Online]. Organized Crime Research. Available: http://www.organized-crime.de/OCLAWS.htm. [26 December 2007]. Organized Crime in the US. [Online]. Available: http://www.organized-crime.de/yhome05.htm. [26 December 2007]. Organized Crime-Major Cases- Past and Present. [Online]. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Available: http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/orgcrime/casestudies.htm. [26 December 2007]. Peter Gill. 2006. Sage Dictionary of Criminology. US. Ruggiero V. 1996. Organised and corporate crime in Europe : offers that can't be refused. Europe. Sage Passas N. 1995. Organized Crime. US Publication. Scott P. 1998. Cocaine Politics. US Publication. Stille A. 1996. Excellent cadavers : the Mafia and the death of the first Italian republic. US. Read More