ORGANIZED CRIME - Exam 1 - Ch 1, 2, 3

Description of the Sociopathic Personality According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the following personality traits are identified as those most likely to be possessed by one with sociopathic personality disorder:

SUPERFICIAL CHARM—The tendency to be smooth and engaging. GRANDIOSE SELF-WORTH—A grossly inflated view of one's abilities and self-worth. NEED FOR STIMULATION or PRONENESS TO BOREDOM—An excessive need for novel and exciting stimulation. PATHOLOGICAL LYING—Can be moderate or high. MANIPULATIVENESS—The use of deceit and deception to cheat others for personal gain. LACK OF REMORSE—A lack of feelings or concern for the losses, pain, and suffering of victims. SHALLOW AFFECT—Emotional poverty or a limited range or depth of feelings. LACK OF EMPATHY—A lack of feelings toward people in general. PARASITIC LIFESTYLE—An intentional, manipulative, selfish, and exploitative financial dependence on others. POOR BEHAVIORAL CONTROLS—Expressions of irritability and impatience. PROMISCUOUS SEXUAL BEHAVIOR—A variety of brief, superficial relations, numerous affairs, and an indiscriminate selection of sexual partners. EARLY BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS—A variety of behaviors prior to age 13, including lying, theft, cheating, vandalism, bullying, and sexual activity. LACK OF REALISTIC, LONG-TERM GOALS—An inability or persistent failure to develop and execute long-term plans and goals. IMPULSIVITY—The occurrence of behaviors that are unpremeditated and lack reflection or planning. IRRESPONSIBILITY—Repeated failure to fulfill or honor obligations and commitments. FAILURE TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR OWN ACTIONS—A failure to accept responsibility for one's actions. MANY SHORT-TERM MARITAL RELATIONSHIPS—A lack of commitment to long-term relationships. JUVENILE DELINQUENCY—Behavior problems between the ages of 13 and 18; mostly behaviors that are crimes. REVOCATION OF CONDITIONAL RELEASE—A revocation of probation or other conditional release due to technical violations. CRIMINAL VERSATILITY—A diversity of types of criminal offense.

Culture Conflict

Sellin (1938) first developed the concept of a culture conflict theory, essentially a clash between the social mores of the middle class and the conduct norms of other groups. These conduct norms are held by groups who live within conventional society but have not been afforded full membership in it. Conduct norms can be defined as the day-to-day rules that govern the behavior of these fragmented groups. History has shown that an allegiance to conduct norms often results in a clash with the mainstream culture.

This Chapter (1) Will Enable You To:

Understand the numerous definitions of organized crime Contrast the roles of different commissions dealing with organized crime Learn about the Sicilian heritage as it relates to the Italian Mafia Learn how official investigations into organized crime have contributed to an understanding of the Italian Mafia Compare the various theories that have been developed to explain the structure of organized crime groups See how organizational constraints affect organized crime groups

Both the empirical evidence on organized crime and the logic of organization theory support Moore's assertions.

First, empirical evidence strongly suggests that the internal structure of criminal enterprises is extremely fluid, with little control or direction from a central authority. Second, the logic of the situation demonstrates how unlikely a tightly organized criminal conspiracy is in actual operation.

The Untouchables

- t was becoming apparent among Chicago's business leaders and organized crime leaders that something had to be done about Capone. - In March 1929, a group of Chicago citizens visited President Herbert Hoover to urge the repeal of Prohibition and ask for help in controlling Capone - More in legend than in fact, the personal integrity of Ness and his band of detectives earned them the name the untouchables from journalists. Ness and his men relentlessly pursued Capone and his gang, serving search warrants and conducting midnight raids. - Although much liquor was seized and destroyed during these raids, Ness was unable to obtain sufficient evidence to arrest Capone. Finally, someone in the Treasury Department came up with the idea of prosecuting the gangster not as a boss of the rackets but as an income tax evader. - Capone was convicted on the charge and sentenced to 11 years in prison and an $80,000 fine by Judge James H. Wilkerson. - After spending two years in an Atlanta prison, Capone was transferred to the prison island of Alcatraz, off the coast of San Francisco. Suffering from syphilis, he was released in 1939 and spent his final years at his Florida estate.

Categories of Organized Criminal Behavior -Organized crime is a unique and dynamic phenomenon that permeates virtually all segments of society. - It differs from other types of criminal activity, however, in several important ways. T

- categories of behavior most commonly associated with organized crime activities include the provision of illicit services and illicit goods, conspiracy to commit crimes, penetration of legitimate business, extortion, and corruption

Provision of Illicit Goods 1- Like illicit services, a hallmark of organized crime is the provision of illicit goods, which are not available from legitimate businesses. In particular,

- llegal drugs represent a primary product in considerable demand on the black market. - Illicit drugs include marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, to name a few, and the sale of these drugs provides organized crime organizations billions of tax-free dollars every year. - Pornography is another black market commodity that generates billions of dollars annually. - Unregistered guns and stolen goods are other products in considerable demand that illicit dealers can sell at lower prices and with more ease than can legitimate distributors.

Organizational Constraints 1- As with legitimate business, illicit enterprises also must sustain the criminal organization as a profitable business entity. - For example, in the legitimate business world, when a small company is successful, expansion is often considered to maximize profits. - Unfortunately, too much expansion too quickly can

- result in organizational and financial chaos and the ultimate demise of the company. The same is true of organized crime; it is in the best interests of organized crime members to try to maximize profits while avoiding detection by authorities and minimizing competition.

Mastrofski and Potter on Organizational Constraints - in an examination of the empirical research on contemporary organized crime groups, Mastrofski and Potter (1986) argue that - Mastrofski and Potter argue that the empirical studies have demonstrated that, rather than being a tightly structured, clearly defined, stable entity,

- the available literature cites several characteristics of organized crime and that these characteristics are often diametrically opposed to those cited in the official version of organized crime. - organized crime operates in a loosely structured, informal, open system.

Regional hierarchies

- tightly controlled groups with strong systems of internal discipline and clearly defined roles and lines of authority - The major difference between these groups and standard hierarchies is that considerable autonomy and independence are granted to local organizations operating within the criminal organization - They have a single leadership structure and a clear line of command. - They tend to be regional in their geographic scope and engage in multiple illegal activities - Like standard hierarchies, regional hierarchies have a strong social or ethnic identity and employ violence as a primary means of maintaining discipline and resolving disputes. - An excellent example of a regional hierarchy is the activities of the Hell's Angels in Canada. The Hell's Angels is a very large, very structured outlaw motorcycle gang (OMG), which derives much of its income from the manufacture and trafficking of illegal drugs.

Miller on Gangs

Miller (1958) argues that participation in youth gangs often provides a training ground for future organized crime participants. During this period of development in a youth gang, useful organized crime qualities are inculcated in apprentices. Miller (1958: 7) identified toughness and smartness (obtaining money by one's wits) as important values necessary for such development. He also suggests that this crime-community nexus creates the "capacity for subordinating individual desires to the general group's interests as well as the capacity for intimate and persistent interaction"

Provision of Illicit Services - The offering of illicit services represents one of the main enterprises of organized crime organizations. Illicit services are those that legitimate businesses do not provide and are proscribed by law. Included are:

(1) gambling operations that act outside the law and offer a financial tax incentive for those who use this service; (2) protection rackets, a form of extortion by which organized crime members approach owners of small businesses and offer them protection for the business in case of "unforeseen" misfortune, such as fire or vandalism; (3) loan-sharking, the illegal lending of money at usurious rates, whose repayment is enforced through violence and intimidation; and (4) prostitution, the sale of sex acts by persons acting as part of a larger organization. -the provision of illicit services is a criminal enterprise that generates money to further the organization's goals. Also, in many cases illicit services are provided in conjunction with illegal goods.

Clustered Hierarchy

- A clustered hierarchy is an organized crime group that involves a number of smaller organized crime groups that coordinate their activities and enterprises. - Clustered hierarchies consist of a number of criminal groups that have established an arrangement of managing their respective activities in a coordinated manner. - As the organization develops, the cluster develops a stronger identity for members than the smaller groups in which they are actual participants. -Mexico's Arellano-Felix Organization, operating out of Tijuana, is a prime example of a successful clustered hierarchy. This group exhibits four major tendencies: (1) it cooperates with a large number of other criminal organizations, (2) it has penetrated deeply into the legitimate economy, (3) it exercises enormous political influence through corruption, and (4) it has a well-developed reputation for the use of violence.

Al Capone (1899-1947)

- Although he never got past the fourth grade, Capone learned all he ever needed to know by running the streets between Gowanus Canal and the harbor in a street gang known as the Five Pointers.

Arnold Rothstein (1882-1928)

- Arnold the Brain Rothstein (AR) was the epitome of a big-time gambling operator and money-maker for more than 20 years in New York. AR was so successful that he was never indicted for any of the crimes in which he was involved. - The Black Sox scandal implicated Rothstein, who was called to testify in Chicago in 1920. After arriving at the courthouse in a black limousine and acting as an indignant New York impresario, Rothstein convinced the grand jury that he was innocent. - Thereafter, Rothstein's empire of casinos, brothels, and racehorses grew until the mid-1920s, when his interests began to focus on drug trafficking. The drug business proved to be an enormous source of income, making Rothstein additional millions. - For no apparent reason Rothstein's health deteriorated, and he became noticeably nervous with shaking hands and twitching eyes. His speech was often slurred, but not from drinking because he did not imbibe. Furthermore, he fell into a spiraling losing streak, often losing tens of thousands of dollars at a time. His racehorses came in last, his gambling casinos were raided, and his crap games were closed down - Finally, one evening after receiving a phone call from McMannus at one of his clubs, Rothstein left for the Park Central Hotel. He was later found in front of the hotel holding his stomach and gasping for air after being shot. Although Rothstein never identified his assailant to the police, McMannus and associate Nathan Raymond were arrested and charged with the murder.

Sam Giancana (1908-1975)

- As a graduate of westside Chicago's old "42 gang," Sam Giancana became part of one of the nation's most notorious criminal syndicates, which became known as the Outfit. - The Selective Service classified Giancana as a psychopath and sent him home, preventing his military induction. - Released from prison, Giancana moved into the southside gambling rackets. - Giancana was noted for many things during his reign in Chicago, one of which was his resistance to the old ways and traditions brought to the United States from Sicily and commonly practiced by the old-guard mobsters such as Carlo Gambino. Indeed, Giancana was not a native Italian but a product of the streets of Chicago. - In 1965, Giancana was sent to prison for one year for failing to cooperate with a government probe into organized crime. Upon his release, he went into self-imposed exile in Mexico and South America. - FBI scrutiny of the gangster was relentless. In July 1974, Giancana was arrested by Mexican authorities and flown to San Antonio, where federal agents were waiting. - On June 19, 1975, after returning from successful gallbladder surgery in Houston, Texas, Giancana was ambushed and shot seven times at close range as he stood at a stove cooking sausage and escarole in the basement of his Oak Park home.

Interfacing with the Community pt2

- As noted, organized crime occupies a key role in a community's production-distribution-consumption function, which provides the rationale for the existence of organized crime. - Organized crime also occupies an important position in a community's socialization functions. It not only socializes its participants but also supports broad dimensions defining parameters of acceptable behavior, legally or illegally. - Organized crime frequently complements functions of formal social control agencies. Although actively engaging in some forms of violent predatory crime (probably instrumental forms surrounding control mechanisms), it provides protection against other forms of predatory crime in some cases. It sets limits on illegal behavior and controls disruptive activities that the law cannot. - Organized crime often provides a socially acceptable means for social participation to persons otherwise excluded from community functions. Existing as a massive social network, organized crime is interconnected with numerous segments of a community and provides opportunities for political, social, and economic participation.

Landesco's Organized Crime Investigation

- Based on the facts of the Hennessey case, many researchers have argued that at the turn of the century the Mafia existed in the United States primarily in a lynch mob's collective imagination.

Dutch Schultz (1902-1935)

- Born Arthur Flegenheimer, "Dutch Schultz" grew up in the Bronx and never went beyond fourth grade. He embarked on a career of thievery. At age 19, he was arrested for theft and sentenced to serve 15 months in prison. When he emerged from prison, he purchased a Bronx saloon with the spoils of his robberies. He then announced that his new name would be Dutch Schultz, a name taken from an old-time Bronx gangster at the turn of the century. - With Prohibition underway, Schultz quickly realized that he could make a fortune in the liquor and beer business, and he proceeded to purchase several more saloons, which he supplied with bootlegged beer and whisky. Soon Schultz's Bronx empire spread into Manhattan as Schultz's gunmen systematically eliminated rival gang members. - . By 1930, Schultz had become a millionaire from his bootlegging and numbers rackets and had decided, along with Frank Costello and associate Joey Rao, that a new racket—slot machines—was worth pursuing. The Schultz gang, which was by then numbering into the hundreds, distributed slot machines throughout New York.

Frank Erikson

- Born in 1896, Frank Erikson was one of the most important organized crime figures in New York, with a career stretching from the 1920s to the 1950s. In addition to his New York operations, he owned "points" in Meyer Lansky's Colonial Inn in Florida; leased the rights to a horse parlor at the Roney Plaza Hotel in Miami; owned a piece of another Florida casino, the Farm; and ran bookmaking operations that covered the Florida race tracks - Despite Erikson's rather successful efforts to shield himself from too much public scrutiny, it is clear that he played a major role in the organizing of crime networks in New York and Florida. He certainly brought considerable financial resources to that organization.

Reasons that Organized Crime Aligns with Legitimate Business

- Collaborative business investments - Concealment opportunities for illicit activities - Provision of money-laundering resources - Sources of reportable legitimate income - The appearance of legitimacy - Organized crime often provides investment capital that would otherwise not be available from other sources.

The Pizza Connection Case

- Couriers of the Bonanno family were known to transport U.S. currency, usually in denominations of $5, $10, and $20, out of the country by private jet to Bermuda or Switzerland. - These funds were then transferred from Bermuda or Switzerland to their criminal recipients in Sicily. - The money was used to pay for the raw opium used in manufacturing heroin in Sicilian laboratories and to finance new laboratory operations. - One of these couriers was Franco Della Torre, who in March 1982 deposited more than $1 million in the Traex account at the Manhattan office of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Smith - The heroin network of Torre and his Mafia counterparts is estimated to have laundered a minimum of $24.4 million between October 1980 and September 1982.

The Irish Immigration - By most accounts, the Irish, the first major immigrant group to enter the United States, arrived in large numbers between 1820 and 1850.

- During that period, Irish-American street gangs such as the Dead Rabbits and Whyos controlled New York's underworld for well over a century before they were faced with competition from newly arriving Italian and Jewish gangs. - Like other European immigrants who would come to the United States, however, they were segregated in urban slums. - Because of this, most Irish immigrants were precluded from their traditional occupation of farming, and a majority of them sought work as unskilled laborers, the only jobs open to them in the industrial areas of large cities. - Rather than relying on the formal system of government imposed on them by the British, the Irish created an informal social system of negotiating and bargaining to achieve amenable outcomes for social conflicts and concerns - Rather than pursuing a formalized education, the Irish thought that employment in politics and government was the most logical and attainable path to social mobility. - With larger numbers of Irish becoming involved in politics and government, crime rates dropped dramatically in many Irish neighborhoods, at least until the Prohibition era began in 1920.

palermo's maxitrial

- During the 1970s, New York police broke up the so-called French Connection: the pipeline for heroin shipments to the United States from Marseilles, France. - This disruption resulted in a new connection being formed; this time the heroin was traveling to the United States via Palermo, Sicily. - As the heroin wars continued, two Mafia dons from Corleone, Salvatore Riina and Bernadardo Provenzano, emerged as victors, and other dons, including Don Masino, otherwise known as Tommaso Buscetta, were marked for extinction by rivals.

Giuliani's Mafia Trials

- During the 1980s, a new crime buster appeared on the scene. Rudolph Giuliani, the U.S. attorney for New York's Southern District, relentlessly pursued Italian organized crime syndicates in New York by preparing detailed criminal cases for prosecution. - By 1983, the FBI boasted that since 1979 the government had convicted almost 500 predominantly Italian criminals and their associates as the result of organized crime investigations. In 1993, Giuliani was elected mayor of the city of New York, and as part of his campaign platform, he promised to continue his pursuit of organized crime and its related criminal enterprises.

Hennessey's Mafia Pact

- During the late 1880s, there was an intense conflict for control of the extortion rackets in the Italian community in New Orleans between the Provenzano family and a gang controlled by Anthony and Charles Matranga - A less charitable interpretation was that Hennessey was not an intrepid law enforcer but merely a corrupt official who engaged with the Provenzanos in alien smuggling. - In any event, Hennessey wrote to the police in Palermo, Sicily, requesting names and descriptions of suspected criminals who could be residing in New Orleans - Hennessey was elated and announced that he would expose this alien organized crime threat at a special upcoming hearing. Unfortunately for him, however, someone had already planned Hennessey's assassination, which was carried out successfully on October 15, 1890,

The Early Drug Syndicates (1915-1930) - Gambling, prostitution, and loan-sharking were usually associated with organized crime groups in U.S. cities throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. - Vice syndicates allied themselves with political machines in these cities. - Large organizations, which extended beyond city neighborhoods, came into existence only if the market required that an infrastructure be created to obtain and distribute illegal commodities over wide areas, especially if the goods had to be imported from abroad. - The importation of bootlegged liquor during the Prohibition years was the most obvious and celebrated example of this market dynamic.

- Even prior to liquor prohibition, however, a criminal syndication had imported and distributed opiates and cocaine to the U.S. public. - As early as the late nineteenth century, W.W. Whaley was identified in the popular press as the King of the Opium Rings, with charges that he controlled the Pacific trade in opiates - For years, opiates and cocaine products had been freely available in over-the-counter patent medicines, soft drinks, and wines in the United States. By the turn of the twentieth century, the United States was estimated to have more than 500,000 opiate addicts, most of whom were white, middle-aged, middle-class women.

Buscetta's Dilemma

- Fearing for his life, Buscetta fled Palermo for South America, where he could resume control of his operations in Brazil. However, in October 1983 he was surprised by Brazilian authorities, who arrested him and held him in custody while U.S. and Italian authorities conferred as to who would try him for his role in international heroin trafficking - t was finally determined that Buscetta would receive the harshest treatment from courts in his native country, and extradition proceedings began. After hearing that he was being extradited back to Italy, Buscetta tried to kill himself by swallowing strychnine, for he knew that to return to Italy meant imminent humiliation and eventual death - Buscetta's testimony would mark the first time that a ranking don would openly break the sacred code of omerta. As it turned out, Buscetta testified in two major criminal inquiries, Palermo's maxitrial and the Pizza Connection case (discussed next) in the United States. - The most important victories of the maxitrial were the life sentences of all members of the Cupola, a 12-member commission formed to facilitate the smooth running of Palermo's Mafia families. After providing both Italian and U.S. authorities with invaluable testimony, Buscetta was placed in the witness protection program and whisked away, along with his wife and children, by agents of the U.S. Marshal's Service to assume a new identity somewhere in the United States.

Problems with Valachi's Testimony - Because so much information was gleaned from the testimony of Joe Valachi, it is important that his performance be reviewed and his credibility tested. - Valachi's testimony, in all its particulars, has been so thoroughly demolished by Smith (1974), Albini (1971), and Morris and Hawkins (1970) that we need only to highlight some of the major problems and inconsistencies with his story.

- First, Valachi's testimony must be put into context. Valachi was a small-time, petty hood who, during more than 30 years as an alleged mafioso, claimed to have been involved in more than 33 murders and to have supervised several different rackets for the Gambino family in New York. - During that time, however, none of Valachi's bosses ever saw fit to promote him in the organization or even go out of their way to protect him - Because Valachi's testimony was motivated by the need for protection from his fellow criminals and the desire for revenge, he clearly was not presenting his version of organized crime from an unbiased, objective point of view - The problems with Valachi's story start with his most basic assertion, the name of the criminal conspiracy of which he claimed to be a part. To this day, it is not clear that the words he actually used in his testimony were "La Cosa Nostra." In addition, Valachi denied the use of the word Mafia, saying he knew the organization only by the name "La Cosa Nostra" - He contradicted himself several times on the issue of La Cosa Nostra initiations. - Valachi committed a serious error in discussing the death of Murder, Inc., hit man Abe Reles - Valachi seriously contradicted himself on issues of the actual structure and operations of La Cosa Nostra. - Valachi claimed that La Cosa Nostra provided assistance to family members who were in trouble, specifically providing lawyers, bail, and other services

Paul Castellano

- Following Carlo Gambino's death, Paul Castellano took charge of the syndicate's Manhattan operations. Due to his conservative politics, the stature of the organization slipped in the following nine years. Castellano's underlings tried to convince their boss that entering into the airport rackets, where a fortune could be made in freight disappearances, was a lucrative proposition. Castellano rejected the notion and chose to continue doing business with legitimate businesspeople, such as Frank Perdue, the chicken mogul. Perdue was having trouble finding shelf space for his products in local supermarkets. After moving his business to Dial Poultry, a business run by Castellano's sons, Perdue's chicken products always received adequate space. - No sooner had they stepped out of their Lincoln than three men appeared and gunned them down. Following their deaths, the press accurately speculated that Gotti was the successor to the reins of the Gambino syndicate.

Louis Freeh's Mafia War

- Freeh had built a reputation for his role in prosecuting the Pizza Connection. As a result of that case, Freeh became well acquainted with investigators on both sides of the Atlantic. In late 1993, Freeh became the first FBI director to travel to Palermo, Sicily, and meet with Sicilian officials as a gesture of goodwill and cooperation in mounting a modern-day attack on organized crime forces in both Italy and the United States. In his speech there, which was delivered at the grave sites of slain judges in Palermo, Freeh stated: "You are not men of honor but cowardly assassins of children ... we will root you out from under every rock, from the dark places where you hide"

Capone's Move to Chicago

- In 1920, Johnny Torrio, also Capone's mentor, brought Capone to Chicago to work with crime boss "Big Jim" Colosimo, Torrio's uncle. - Colosimo, who was known as the largest operator of prostitution in Chicago, had risen from an immigrant ditch digger to be the owner of a fashionable café and a political power in Chicago's first ward. - Capone soon developed a reputation as a benevolent crime king who was providing the people of Chicago what they wanted most: beer and liquor. He began to exert political influence in the city. - , Capone gradually gained control of rackets in virtually all of Chicago. He ruled as de facto mayor, police chief, and fire chief from his headquarters in the Hawthorne Hotel.

Report of the President's Commission on Organized Crime on Levels of Membership - In 1983, under the Reagan administration, the President's Commission on Organized Crime (PCOC) was established to study the nature and extent of organized crime in the United States and to develop strategies and recommendations to combat it.

- In April 1986, the PCOC developed its final report that clearly delineates levels of involvement of members and nonmembers of organized crime. These levels include the criminal group, the protectors, specialized support, user support, and social support.

The Pendergast Political Machine - Just as Irish organized criminals used the political machine in cities such as New York, Chicago, and Boston, other gangsters made good use of it in other U.S. cities. - Although researchers suggest that the era of the political machine technically ended in 1919, variations of it continued to proliferate across the United States for more than a decade after.

- In Kansas City, the Pendergast political machine dominated politics for more than five decades; this illustrates the power and effectiveness of the political machine in local government. - Thomas Joseph Pendergast operated a typical political machine that ultimately became famous as one of the most powerful, corrupt, and violent in U.S. history. - He was one of the few political bosses who participated in meetings during the 1920s and 1930s in which organized crime planned Prohibition and gambling strategies. - The machine operated by requiring virtually every tavern and saloon in the city to pay tribute to Lazia's and Weissman's minions, who would, in turn, pay off the police and provide a handsome percentage of the spoils to Pendergast himself.

Colombo's Fatal EGO

- In the 1960s, Colombo made another serious error by stepping into the limelight with his newly created Italian American Civil Rights League. The organization was created to promote the Italian heritage and fight the stereotypical public image, created by law enforcement agencies and the media, of Italian and Sicilian Americans as gangsters. In reality, Colombo intended to provide a smokescreen to conceal criminal activities. However, the organization began to grow, making tens of thousands of dollars for Colombo's mob. - Johnson fired three shots, one of which hit Colombo in the head. Before Johnson could flee, Colombo's bodyguards shot and killed him. Colombo was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was diagnosed as suffering severe brain damage. He lingered in a vegetative state for seven years until he died in 1978.

Legitimate Employment Opportunities - An often overlooked aspect of organized crime is its provision of legitimate jobs for waitresses, clerks, technicians, and bartenders.

- It seems logical to argue that many people thus employed by organized crime operations could be threats to the community in other employment activities. - Because many of these people are unskilled, not well socialized, and unemployable, poverty and unemployment could make them amenable to various predatory crimes directed at people within the community if they were not offered the option of taking such jobs in criminal enterprises

In 1933, the bloodiest crime event of the decade, the Union Station Massacre, occurred in Kansas City.

- It was a gory event personally orchestrated by Lazia to free bank robber and killer Frank "Jelly" Nash from the custody of FBI agents, who were transporting him to federal prison. The massacre brought Kansas City into national focus as a slaughterhouse safe for no one. - The news of the massacre shook the Pendergast machine as the political boss realized that one of his crime boss allies was no longer able to maintain a low public profile. - In addition to encouraging local reform politicians to act against Lazia, Pendergast marked him for elimination. As a result, bootlegging and tax evasion charges were brought against Lazia in 1933.

Joseph Colombo

- Joey Colombo began his criminal career as a low-level thief until he was ultimately taken into Joseph Bonanno's syndicate. When Bonanno decided to take over in 1964, he reportedly gave Joseph Magliocco a hit list. As a result, Magliocco called Joe Colombo, his top mob enforcer, and gave him the arduous task of killing several mob bosses on the list. Colombo realized that completing this assignment would mean his own death and decided to inform each target on Joe Bonanno's list of the plot. As a result, Bonanno was kidnapped but later released on his promise that he would retire from the business.

Joseph Bonanno

- Joseph Bonanno worked for Chicago's Al Capone in the bootlegging business during the 1920s. In the early 1930s, he moved to New York and worked for gang boss Salvatore Maranzano, who was in the midst of his ongoing war with Joe Masseria. Following the deaths of both Maranzano and Masseria, Bonanno emerged as a powerful gang boss controlling loan-sharking and gambling operations stretching from Montreal to Haiti. After the imprisonment of Lucky Luciano and Louis Buchalter in 1938, Bonanno fled to Sicily, but he returned in 1945 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen. - In the 1980s, Bonanno wrote an autobiography in which he admitted much of his organized crime activities. As a result, authorities questioned him about statements made in the book. When he refused to answer, he was jailed. Bonanno died in 2002, leaving behind a colorful chapter in organized crime's history.

The Appalachian Incident

- Just as the concept of the Mafia began to recede following the sensational disclosures of the Kefauver hearings, new evidence rekindled fears about a national criminal organization. - In 1944, Edgar Croswell, a state trooper in New York, arrested an employee of Joseph Barbara, Sr. ("Joe the Barber"), for stealing fuel. - When Barbara refused to file charges, Croswell began to suspect that Barbara himself could be a criminal. Accordingly, he began what proved to be a 14-year investigation of Barbara, which included the use of phone taps - On November 14, 1957, Croswell was watching the Barbara home in Appalachian, New York, when he noticed a large number of people arriving there (the Appalachian incident). Because of his long-harbored suspicions of Barbara, Croswell set up a roadblock and instituted a check of license plate numbers. - They eventually walked on this minor charge. The license plate check ultimately enabled Croswell to compile a list of names and addresses of the guests, but it took almost a full week for officials to attach any significance to Barbara's barbecue guests.

Investigations into Organized Crime

- Much of what we now know about organized crime has been gleaned over the years from a series of official investigations by agencies of the justice and treasury departments, as well as state and local law enforcement organizations. - Although these organizations had different concerns and agendas, they provided invaluable insight into the inner workings, politics, structure, and behavior of organized crime

An Outraged Community

- News of the murder shocked and outraged the community, which was already strongly biased against immigrants in general and Italian immigrants in particular. - The repercussions of the assassination were felt almost at once when 19 Italian immigrants whose names appeared in Hennessey's files were indicted for his murder - lso indicted was Charles "Millionaire Charlie" Matranga, who, along with several others, had allegedly given the order for Hennessey's murder. - Of the 18 Italians tried in the case, 9 were exonerated by the jury and the 9 remaining suspects remained in prison while their files were slowly processed - The citizens of New Orleans were outraged and immediately organized their own brand of justice, dispatching a massive lynch mob to the jail. The lynch mob killed 11 people, some of whom were not connected to the Hennessey murder.

Frank Costello

- Of all of the early organized criminals in New York, the cool-headed Frank Costello was probably one of the most politically influential. His rackets were protected by some of New York's most powerful politicians. Even though Costello had a respectable veneer, he was a hardened gangster with Murder, Inc., architects Joe Adonis and Albert Anastasia and the "King of the Bookmakers," Frank Erikson, as his closest friends. - In addition to being one of Luciano's top advisors during the 1920s, Costello was instrumental in organizing one of the first national crime meetings in Atlantic City in 1929, which was called by Johnny Torrio and Meyer Lansky to introduce a new wire service to future syndicate leaders. At the end of Prohibition, Costello and friend Meyer Lansky concentrated on gambling interests in New York and Miami and eventually developed casinos in Havana, Cuba, with the support and backing of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista - n May 1957, a large-framed syndicate enforcer, Vincent "the Chin" Gigante, was sent to kill Costello. As Costello entered his luxury apartment building in New York, Gigante shot several bullets at him, grazing Costello's head. Gigante was later arrested for the shooting, but Costello refused to identify him as the attacker. However, Genovese's message was loud and clear and, in the aftermath of rumors about his instrumental role in the imprisonment of Genovese in 1959, Costello retired from the rackets in the early 1960s.

Organized Crime, the Media, and Popular Culture

- Once we wade into the quicksand of culture and media, however, scientific validity and reliability become lost in the shifting sands of words and images—not that there is a dearth of popular cultural sources of information on organized crime. To the contrary, a plethora of images and words are available to us in a kaleidoscope of forms. Organized crime is an immensely popular theme for novels, movies, television dramas, true-crime reenactments, and journalistic presentations both in print and on film. - With all these sources of information—fictional, nonfictional, and somewhere between; print; image; and multimedia—organized crime as a social fact becomes blurred in a technological avalanche of impressions - There is a plethora of information, and it comes to us at such speed and in such volume that discerning fact from fiction, reliable from unreliable, valid from invalid becomes an almost impossible task. In fact, the modern mass media works as what Reiman (1998) calls a "carnival-mirror."

Core Group

- One of the most important emerging forms of organized crime readily adapted to conducting enterprise in a global economy is the core group. - A core group is an unstructured group of organized criminals surrounded by a larger network of individuals engaged in serious criminal activity. - Unlike hierarchies, a core group has a flat organizational structure in which power is shared by all participants - It consists of a small number of individuals, which makes it much easier to avoid law enforcement interference and maintain internal security - Group identity is maintained through their illegal activities, but no strong social or ethnic identities are associated with core group organizations. - Rarely is such an organization known by a specific name or, for that matter, known to the general public or law enforcement at all. -One of the most successful drug trafficking organizations in the world is a perfect example of a core group form of organization. - The Juvenal Group operates in Cali, Medellin, and Bogota, Colombia, and is primarily engaged in the trafficking of cocaine to the United States. - The Juvenal Group has no shared ethnic or social identity and makes almost no use of violence. Rather it relies on massive political corruption -The organization has a horizontal rather than vertical structure

Extortion

- Organized crime often infiltrates legitimate business through extortion. - In its most elementary parlance, extortion is a form of theft and is defined as the use or threatened use of violence or force to achieve a criminal end.

- Community is a broad term, encompassing numerous aspects of social and political life.

- Organized crime serves a functional role in the community. - Organized crime often maximizes opportunities and fills voids associated with a community's failure to provide adequate employment opportunities, sufficient retirement benefits, adequate information and assistance in providing and locating adequate housing and consumer goods, and sufficient funding to strengthen legitimate economic enterprises on which many community members depend for survival.

Robert Kennedy's Justice Department Task Force

- Prior to the presidential election of John F. Kennedy in 1960, it was well known that organized crime had long-standing ties to his father, Joseph P. - Kennedy, an associate of many well-known criminals and bootleggers of the Prohibition era. Some evidence, much of it from the recollections of alleged Chicago mafioso Sam Giancana, suggests that the mob played a role in the campaign and election of John F. Kennedy. - During the 1960 election, one of the more crucial states for the Democratic vote was Illinois, where the Chicago vote had to outweigh the votes from the traditionally Republican rural areas. - Despite allegations of mob assistance to the Kennedy campaign in Chicago and possibly West Virginia, President Kennedy's brother Robert probably played the most significant role in combating organized crime of any government official in U.S. history. - As soon as he was appointed U.S. attorney general, Robert Kennedy made it clear that he had no intention of changing his long-standing opposition to organized crime.

Illicit Income for Community Members

- Relative to a community's production-distribution-consumption function, organized crime often provides services and jobs for community residents that the legitimate world cannot or will not supply. - Doing so is particularly important in depressed or economically declining areas. -Organized crime also provides prostitution, pornography, and drugs. - Regardless of moral and political issues surrounding it, prostitution often employs women whose primary goal is to support their legitimate incomes - Numerous jobs are associated with both the legitimate and illegitimate sides of the production and distribution of pornography - Drug networks provide employment income for numerous participants occupying various levels in the organization. - Another contribution relative to the provision of jobs is the economic enhancement associated with money received from organized crime group

The Corruption Link - Understanding the social control function of a community is necessary to understanding its accommodations to organized crime

- Since organized crime groups' illegal activities are continuous, these groups must seek accommodations from a community's formal social control entities. - Hills (1969) argues that a basic characteristic of all organized crime is its collusion with enforcement and political structures - The compromises of the political and criminal justice systems include more than just graft and corruption; they also involve a subtle interplay among many community forces. - Community members involved in illegal transactions do not perceive themselves as victims and consequently are unlikely to initiate complaints regarding them. - Stronger organization by a group decreases risk of arrest. - Consequently, people apprehended by the police are often those with greatest vulnerability. - middle-level distributors for organized groups, are more likely to become the focus of police activity. - Some argue that selective enforcement of laws is itself a vital control function. - The reduction of the strain on the criminal justice system limits organizational strain and reduces the potential for violence, thereby strengthening the community's social control function. - An equally important consideration is that such an accommodation in enforcement reduces tension emanating from the law itself. - Social control functions must decide whether to enforce legislation that lacks consensus. - Finally, persons involved in social control functions often benefit directly from the presence of organized crime. - High demands for illicit services generate huge profits sufficient to offer substantial inducements capable of encouraging the non-enforcement of these laws.

Interfacing with the Community

- Social participation and mutual support, as community functions, are highly interrelated. - These processes of association explain a great deal about the organization of organized crime - characterizes organized crime as a patron-client relationship emerging from social participation in a community. - Individuals involved in organized crime and its operations in this web of social participation are not, in many cases, directly part of an organization. - Organized crime's role in providing assistance to the community in its major functions, while taking advantage of opportunities provided by the community, makes it a functional community institution.

A New Legal Problem

- Soon a new problem emerged for Schultz. He was now charged with tax evasion by Thomas Dewey, U.S. attorney and mob-buster (see Chapter 1). With some slick legal maneuvering on the part of Schultz's attorney, the trial venue was changed to upstate New York, where Schultz mingled with the rural population of the town and endeavored to convince citizens that he was being framed. - n true Schultz fashion, he was argumentative and demonstrated a tendency to ignore the good of other syndicates in favor of his own personal rackets. This made the others feel very uneasy. In addition to Schultz's behavior, Luciano and Lansky were also nervous about Thomas Dewey, who was starting to closely scrutinize Schultz's underworld rackets. - At one point, Schultz decided to murder Dewey to end the investigation once and for all. The matter was discussed by the other syndicate leaders. - Schultz's peers decided to kill him and save his rackets, which would no doubt be exposed by a massive investigation if Dewey were murdered. Ironically, to ensure its own continued existence, the syndicate realized that it must preserve the life of one of its archenemies, Dewey. - Schultz and three of his gang members were at the Palace Chop House in Newark, New Jersey, where they discussed the details of Dewey's impending assassination. During this discussion, a car drove up in front of the restaurant. Its occupants were Emmanuel "Mendy" Weiss, Charles "the Bug" Workman, and a third man known only as "Piggy." The men entered the tavern and shot Schultz and each of his associates, all of whom were taken to the hospital, where they later died

The Tammany Hall Machine - The name Tammany Hall has become synonymous with political corruption in New York. - This political organization controlled New York politics from the early days of the United States until its demise in the 1960s. - Tammany Hall, which took its name from the Indian Chief Tammaned, was founded in 1789 to oppose the ruling conservative Federalist Party, which failed to represent the interests of less affluent citizens.

- Tammany Hall was incorporated as a fraternal society in 1805 and was aligned closely with the newly emerging Democratic Party. - With the arrival of the Irish immigrants, Tammany Hall was soon in the hands of Irish politicians, who pushed aside traditional political factions while claiming to represent the interests of all other ethnic and religious groups in Manhattan. - Tammany reached its peak of political power during the 1860s when William Magear Tweed became head of Tammany's general committee. - Tweed went on to become state senator in 1868 and facilitated the 1870 passage of a city charter that allowed Tammany Hall the authority to control the city's treasury without interference. - Soon, the Tweed ring pillaged millions of dollars using bid-rigging schemes, padded payrolls, and overpriced goods and services provided by Tammany thugs.

The Political Machine (1830-1919) - Urban politics became the route for Irish immigrants to follow to attain local power and upward mobility. - In most cases, the local politician was closely affiliated with corner taverns and often some aspects of criminality.

- Tavern operators frequently doubled as local politicians (machine politician), and the tavern owner and his followers easily influenced the tavern's customers. - This became especially important in the large cities, where local government was fragmented into wards, each of which was sectioned into precincts. - It was common then for politicians, with the help of local gangs and other supporters, to deliver a lopsided vote on election day to ensure the dominance of Democrats. - In exchange for their help in securing votes, the machine politician reciprocated by finding these supporters jobs, housing, and assistance from government agencies in the district.

John Gotti

- The 1980s introduced a new kind of organized criminal, one who frowned upon the old ways and tended to view the rackets from a new perspective. The new organized criminals were younger men who opted for suburban life and favored large extravagant homes, flashy cars, and expensive clothes. They were less insulated than their predecessors and more open to new opportunities. - Before he was sentenced to prison in 1992, John Gotti was the prototype of the new breed of Italian American criminal. The "Dapper Don," as the media dubbed him, was known for his limousines and tailored suits and for eating at fine New York restaurants. Gotti rose quickly to the head of the old Carlo Gambino syndicate. - His rise in the New York mob began with an incident in 1972 when Manny Gambino (nephew to the all-powerful Carlo Gambino) was kidnapped and held for ransom. After receiving only part of the $350,000 ransom they had demanded, the kidnappers murdered their captive and dumped his corpse in a New Jersey garbage dump. - Enraged over the incident, Gambino sent for his top enforcers to avenge the incident. One of the kidnappers, James McBratney, was murdered by three of Gambino's men, including Gotti, in a Staten Island bar. Gotti was arrested, convicted, and sent to prison for seven years. - Upon his release, Gotti was rewarded for his loyalty by being made one of the top managers in the Gambino syndicate. He earned a reputation of being ruthless, even with his own gang members. According to FBI surveillance tapes, Gotti threatened to blow up members' houses if they refused to obey his orders. Gotti was also famous for orchestrating the deaths of his rivals while climbing to the top spot in the New York mob.

Impact of the Appalachian Incident on the FBI

- The Appalachian meeting caused considerable embarrassment for J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. - Prior to it, Hoover had confidently asserted that there was no such thing as organized crime in the United States, but that the threat of communism was the most important national problem. - While the FBI turned out reports on bank robberies, auto thefts, and espionage, it collected virtually no data on organized crime. - Once the story of Appalachian surfaced in the news, the bureau's neglect ended. - No such files were available, but Kennedy received a plethora of information from Harry Anslinger's FBN, which had been tracking alleged mafiosi for decades. - The following year, 1958, Hoover's demand for immediate action resulted in a two-volume FBI report on the Mafia, but it also embarrassed Hoover because it revealed that the Mafia had been in business during the entire time that he had been denying its existence. - In any case, to save face, the FBI began an aggressive effort to build its image as the nation's top Mafia foe

The Camorra - the history of the Camorra is instructive in helping us understand the origins of Italian organized crime.

- The Camorra first appeared in the mid-1800s in Naples, Italy, as a prison gang—the word "Camorra" means gang. - Once released, members formed clans in cities and continued to grow in power. - The Camorra has more than 100 clans and approximately 7,000 members, making it the largest of the Italian organized crime groups - In Naples, in the province of Campania on the Italian mainland, a powerful criminal brotherhood called the Camorra also operated. Stemming from a Spanish word meaning dispute or fight, the Camorra developed during the 1820s as a self-protection society for inmates in the Spanish-dominated prisons of Naples. - The organization soon expanded its operations and influence beyond the prison walls in Italy, and bands of criminals implemented extortion schemes. A

Mussolini's Mafia Purge

- The Italian Mafia grew and developed during the reign of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in the 1920s. - As the legend goes, however, local mafioso Mayor Don Ciccio, during the dictator's visit to Sicily in 1924, publicly embarrassed Mussolini. - It became instantly clear that in Sicily the local mayor had more political and social power than the dictator himself. So Mussolini, a man who saw room for only one absolute power in Italy, was outraged.

Penetration of Legitimate Business - Because organized crime members have no legal way to spend their illicit profits, they must hide as much of their revenue as possible. 2- An example of organized crime involvement in legitimate business is the well-documented relationship between construction locals, contractors, and the Italian American crime syndicates in New York.

- The ability to penetrate legitimate business gives the organized crime unit both the chance to conceal illicit revenues and an opportunity to hide behind a cloak of legitimacy in the community to avoid the suspicion of citizens and detection by police. 2- In 1986, the President's Commission on Organized Crime (PCOC) concluded that more than a dozen important construction locals in New York had documented relationships with known members of organized crime.

Criminal Network

- The criminal network represents the cutting edge of organized crime in the twenty-first century - Although localized crime networks have existed throughout history, their utility in a global economy makes them, along with core groups, the most efficient forms of criminal organizations for the new millennium - Criminal networks are loosely organized, highly adaptable, very fluid networks of individual participants who organize themselves around an ongoing criminal enterprise - The membership, shape, and organization of a network are defined by those individuals' participation in it at any given time - Individual attributes, such as specific skills, financial resources, political connections, and the like, determine the importance of network participants. - There is no sense of ethnic or social identity—only personal loyalties to the enterprise itself. Networks are created, re-formed, and initiated around a series of continuing criminal projects. - Individuals come and go from the network, so the organization is constantly re-forming itself from project to project - Criminal networks maintain a very low public profile and almost never identify themselves by any name or attribution other than the participation of the individuals in the network itself. - A good example of a crime network is the Verhagen Group, which operated in Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, and Utrecht in the Netherlands. The primary business of the Verhagen Group was the trafficking of hashish, but it also engaged in large-scale business crimes, including fraud and embezzlement, real estate fraud, and theft.

The Valachi Testimony at the McClellan Committee

- The final piece required to build a conspiracy theory around the Mafia was found in 1963 when Joseph Valachi testified before the McClellan Committee, which was looking into the relationship between narcotics trafficking and organized crime. - While a prisoner at the U.S. penitentiary in Atlanta, Valachi beat another prisoner to death. His prison indiscretion proved to be a major break for Attorney General Robert Kennedy as chief counsel for the McClellan Committee. - His testimony shed light on many questions about the inner workings of the Mafia. He introduced the term La Cosa Nostra and made known the existence of the Commission, the mob's supreme council. - More important, Valachi outlined the mob's hierarchical structure and discussed the geographic distribution of criminal families across the nation. In all, he named 289 specific individuals as members of the Mafia. - Interestingly, six weeks after Valachi completed his testimony before the McClellan Committee, John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

Problems with the Appalachian Incident

- The significant question of what between 20 and 100 leading Italian gang figures were doing in Appalachian remains unanswered. - By most accounts, the meeting at Appalachian had been the Mafia's most famous—and most disastrous—summit meeting ever - Popular theories concerned the future course of narcotics and gambling, the fate of Cuban investments, or the balance of power in the New York underworld. - Albert Anastasia had recently been killed, there had been an attempt on the life of Frank Costello, and Vito Genovese appeared to be rising rapidly to a dominant position. - The wide disparity in possible interpretations should immediately indicate that none of the theorists had any specific information on the matter. - Plenty of experts, notably the Narcotics Bureau and, later, Joe Valachi, have attempted to prove the importance of Appalachian as it relates to organized crime. We certainly should not reject out of hand the common claim made at the time that the guests were there to visit Barbara during his illness.

Community Acceptance of Organized Crime

- The socialization function is helpful in explaining why organized crime is not regarded as an inherent evil in all communities - Bell (1953) and Ianni (1974), among others, have argued that crime, particularly organized crime, offers avenues for social mobility, especially in communities where legitimate paths are either blocked or difficult to achieve. - In addition to the dearth of legitimate success routes, some communities have specific conditions that make innovation more likely to result in criminal outcomes - Research shows that community reference groups shape modes of adaptation to social conditions. - In observing other people who have attained success by innovating, a sense of strain that helps shape future conformity develops. - Other community members are influenced by reference groups' actions and means of success attainment. - Many neighborhoods where organized crime figures are active would have been classified as slums by some researchers. - Finally, the existing information lends credence to the idea of the existence of socialization and social bonding processes that serve a recruitment function and ensure a sense of loyalty and belonging among organized criminals.

The Castellammarese War - The Castellammarese War (also discussed in Chapter 3) is a vital component in understanding the alleged origins of the U.S. Mafia and the important role that the alien conspiracy theory has played in the study of organized crime

- This is the juncture at which the modern Cosa Nostra allegedly emerged after the wholesale execution of old-time Sicilian crime leaders. On September 10, 1931, Salvatore Maranzano, "the boss of bosses" in the United States, was assassinated. Cressey (1969: 44) tells us that "on that day and the two days immediately following, some forty Sicilian gang leaders across the country lost their lives in battle." - Nelli (1976) also disputes the official version of the purge. The idea that more than 40 top gangsters could have been murdered in a 2-day period simply defies logic. First, surely the word that assassinations were underway would have spread like wildfire throughout the underworld or would have resulted in a large-scale counterstrike; second, it took at least four men to murder Maranzano. -

Violent Competition

- Trouble began to brew during 1930 when Schultz realized that Legs Diamond, a former employee of the Schultz organization, was behind the hijacking of many of his beer delivery trucks. - War broke out between the Schultz and Diamond factions and ended with Diamond's demise. - During his criminal career, Diamond had been shot so many times that the press named him the "underworld's clay pigeon." - Finally, his luck ran out on December 19, 1931; after celebrating his acquittal on a kidnapping charge, Diamond staggered home drunk and collapsed in his bed. As he slept, he was murdered by killers dispatched by Schultz. - More trouble occurred in 1931 when the Coll brothers, Vincent and Peter, began beating up speakeasy owners who bought their beer from the Schultz mob and insisted that the owners buy beer and liquor from their organization. - For some time, Coll remained the focal point of concern for the Dutchman. One night Schultz and his bodyguard Danny Iamascia were walking down a Manhattan street and spotted two persons walking in the shadows close behind. Figuring these men were Coll and company, Schultz and Iamascia pulled their guns and fired.

Carlo Gambino

- Upon his death in 1976, law enforcement officials widely believed that Carlo Gambino had probably been the most powerful organized crime figure in New York. Gambino disdained publicity, preferring to stay within the Italian community of New York. He deplored the suggestion that drug trafficking should become one of the mob's rackets, fearing that it would allow federal authorities to infiltrate the ranks of organized crime more easily. - Gambino was arrested 16 times, but went to jail only once (for 2 months) on a tax-evasion conviction. Shortly before dying of natural causes in 1976, Gambino selected his brother-in-law Paul Castellano and an associate named Aniello Dellacroce to take over syndicate operations.

Vito Genovese

- Without a doubt, Vito Genovese was one of the most feared and ruthless mob bosses in U.S. history. His climb to power was attributed to his ability to betray friends and associates, while being able to outwit his organized crime counterparts and underworld rivals. - His first rackets were the extortionate protection rackets, in which he preyed on local businesspeople and vendors in the neighborhood. Soon, he met another small-time thief who possessed some of the same "qualities"—Charles Lucky Luciano. Genovese soon began working for Luciano while branching out into other criminal ventures, such as burglary and robbery. - The two men then proceeded to Gallo's home, where Rupolo went to the washroom to examine the gun. He reloaded it and, as he walked back into the living room, he fired into Gallo. Gallo was not mortally wounded, however, and lived to identify his assailant, who was arrested and sentenced for 20 years. - While in prison, Rupolo brooded because Genovese had failed to provide him adequate legal counsel. He soon talked to prison officials about his boss Vito Genovese and his involvement in the Boccia murder. New York's famous mob-buster prosecutor, Thomas Dewey, became interested in what Rupolo had to say. Rather than wait around to be arrested, Genovese left the country for Naples, where he owned an elegant villa. - Over the years, he had anticipated the possibility of an emergency move and had moved an estimated $2 million in cash to Italian banks to facilitate his comfortable existence in exile. Once in Italy, however, Genovese became active in Mafia-Camorra drug-trafficking activities. He was soon able to ingratiate himself with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini by making large cash contributions to Mussolini's personal bank account. - It was not long, however, before Genovese was identified as an American fugitive and was brought to New York to stand trial for the murder of Boccia. - Genovese operated as a top mob boss in New York until he was indicted there in 1959. At last the government built a strong drug-trafficking case against him, which resulted in his receiving a 15-year sentence in prison, where he died in 1969.

Vito Cascio Ferro

- was also known as Don Vito. He was a prominent Sicilian mafioso who also operated in the United States, where he "pioneered" a new technique of extortion by the Mafia within the Italian communities of Sicily and America. - His technique was to not extort large sums of money at any given time that could possibly bankrupt victims. Rather, the victims would be coerced into paying smaller sums on a regular basis that would not break them or put them out of business. - This was known as the pizzu, named after the small beak of a bird and the Mafia saying, to wet the beak as it applies to the extortion of money.

The Village Becomes Organized - One of the most comprehensive examinations of the Sicilian Mafia comes from Anton Blok (1974), an anthropologist who studied the Mafia of a Sicilian village for the period from 1860 to 1960. - He suggests -roles - Hess points out that the urban Mafia in Sicily and Italy, which has been the subject of these reports, has a great deal in common with American urban gangsters precisely because the new urban Mafia in Sicily has copied the model of American criminals presented in the media

- what we often call the Mafia is in reality an entity that developed from an association between Sicilian bandits and violent peasant entrepreneurs, the gabelloti, who had responsibility for the maintenance of order and security on the large estates of absentee landlords. - using the Mafia as his prime example, that organized criminals are more often than not allies of the aristocracy to whom they pose no real threat and as a result are inherently conservative and often a reactionary force in society -One role was as an effective medium of communication among the peasants, the government, and the landlords. - Second, gabelloti provided land and jobs to the peasants, thus making themselves vital to economic survival. - they also managed estates, thereby providing income for the landlords. - Fourth, they in reality provided the only social control on the island, acting as unofficial agents of the state to maintain order. - The final role was to provide the only real official power in Sicily in the absence of an effective police force and military

The Hennessey Incident in New Orleans

-Between 1900 and 1914, it has been estimated that about 196,000 Italians, including large numbers of Sicilians, immigrated to the United States (Nelli 1976: 22), primarily for economic reasons. - Although the existence of the Mafia was well known by Sicilian and Italian authorities, U.S. police were still unaware of this large criminal organization. - The first indication of possible Mafia activity on U.S. soil occurred in the late nineteenth century when the police chief of New Orleans, David Hennessey, began to suspect Mafia infiltration into the already thriving underworld of New Orleans. He was correct

The Unione Siciliana

-The Unione Siciliana had its beginnings in the 1880s as a fraternal organization to promote social events and provide life insurance for Sicilian immigrants in New York City (Inciardi 1975). - In time, its influence grew and votes cast by its members were sufficient to affect the outcome of major elections in several wards. - Gradually, its influence reached to other major cities across the country. The organization slowly became transformed into a criminal group under the leadership of Ignazio Saietta, who manipulated his way to the top spot in the organization shortly after World War I. Once there, he used his official powers to establish rackets in prostitution, extortion, kidnapping, and murder for hire. - it became clear to possible contenders for the presidency of the Unione Siciliana that the benefits of holding the office were clearly outweighed by the hazards. However, as the Depression of the 1930s began, the Unione Siciliana faded into obscurity.

The Pizza Connection

-exposed Mafia's heroin business -Headed by crime boss Gaetano Badalamente -arrests were made through the use of crime-boss-turned-witness Tommaso Buscetta -investigation expanded worldwide - Much of what has been learned about the Italian American crime syndicates and the Sicilian Mafia was gleaned through a major investigation known as the Pizza Connection. - It addressed several gangland killings, including that of New York's Carmine Galente in 1979, but it primarily involved heroin smuggling, which began with Sicilian Mafia drug shipments from the Golden Triangle (Laos, Burma, and Thailand) to Palermo and then to U.S. cities such as New York and Miami. - In fact, it was alleged that between 1979 and 1984, pizzerias in the East and Midwest acted as distribution points for at least 330 pounds of heroin per year, worth an estimated $1.6 million on the street. -

The Sicilian Seed - One view of the Mafia states that violent crime, organized and ruthless, was transplanted to the United States from Sicily.

-the official version of organized crime rests on an argument that the Mafia in Sicily was and is a more or less unified group of families operating within a highly organized structure and has dominated the political and social lives of Sicilians for at least the past century. - The contrary view is that the Mafia as a criminal society never really existed at all, but was and is an apparition created to explain the pervasive corruption and inequity in Sicilian political and social life

The Empirical Research 1- Small, fragmented enterprises tend to populate illegal markets. - This results from two basic facts of the illegal market: 2- Geographic scope in organized crime is also limited. - This is true for the same reasons. 3- As a result of these market uncertainties, highly adaptive, informally organized, and relatively short-lived networks tend to populate --- 4- Mark Haller's analysis of organized crime groups finds shifting patterns of ---, rather than hierarchical, bureaucratic structures. 5- - Research on organized crime in Detroit, Seattle, Reading, Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago all find that countless ---and---populate the illegal markets. - none of that research produced any evidence of centralized control by a ---bureaucratic organization, or even multiple hierarchically structured organizations. 6- Organized crime engages in enterprises that are neither ---nor---. - The empirical research clearly demonstrates that very few criminal enterprises last for ---, so they are certainly not continuous. In addition, ---in organized crime, as well as organizational participants, are constantly changing and shifting. 7= Organized crime is a ----enterprise, but the distinction between licit and illicit markets is often difficult to determine. - Obviously organized crime groups, like all capitalist enterprises, exist for the purpose of accumulating wealth and power. But the question of criminality is often difficult to discern. - The issue of legality often is very much in question. 8- The empirical research fails to substantiate organized crime attributes like ---

1- (1) a small number of employees and (2) organizational segmentation minimizes exposure to law enforcement. - AS Reuter (1983) has pointed out, it is the employees of the illicit enterprise who are the greatest threat to the continuation of the enterprise because they make the best witnesses against the enterprise. 2- A limited geographic area minimizes the number of law enforcement agencies that have to be dealt with, and provides for a more efficient means of communication. 3- illicit markets 4- partnership 5 - informal and fluid criminal associations - single 6- continuous nor self-perpetuating - long periods of time - power relations 7- profit-driven 8- hierarchy, bureaucratic structure, specialization, continuity, stable organizational membership, and large size.

"Groups" of Criminals 1- Organized crime networks are made up of people who work together to engage in criminal enterprises. - Some participants have a peripheral relationship to networks and are brought into the group to perform specific tasks: Bureaucratic or Network Structure? 2- Generally, arguments over structure revolve around two ideal types: 3- Law enforcement usually contends that organized crime has a hierarchical corporate (bureaucratic) structure. This involves a defined hierarchy, 4-- the bureaucratic, corporate model of organized crime is ill-suited to the tasks that must be performed by criminal organizations.

1- - Computer programmers and communications experts may be needed to encrypt communications, keep track of information, and regularly check computers, phones, and so on, for security problems. - Bankers, stock brokers, and financial analysts may perform services related to money laundering. - On extremely rare occasions, enforcers (hit men) may be used to work out a particular problem. The cost of effective violence is too high to be maintained on a daily basis and it is used so rarely that most crime networks handle violence on a contract basis. 2- the hierarchical/bureaucratic structure often associated with the Mafia and the organized crime network model often advocated by critics of the Mafia model. 3- - with people in leadership and management roles who make "policy" decisions. -"Middle management" oversees the carrying out of those policies, - Finally, there are the "line workers" who run street sales of drugs and provide physical protection to street dealers. 4- Most organized groups today are networks, loose associations of illicit entrepreneurs

Globalization and Organized Crime 1- we can discern two major impacts on its activities and structures. 2- in accommodating these economic changes, organized crime has moved from traditional criminal activities like ---to newer forms and has reinforced its role in other activities. 3- An unstable political world created in the wake of globalization has also created massive markets for illegal arms sales. 4- Business in a globalized economy is very good for organized crime. It is estimated that illegal commerce accounts for about ---percent of all international trade. But, to take advantage of these opportunities, organized crime must structure itself for the globalized marketplace.

1- - First, rather than discrete local markets for goods and services, we now have a single global market. With new computer and communications technology, massively expanded air transportation services, and instantaneous electronic banking services, illegal goods and services can be provided anywhere in the world. - Second, it is important to understand that the impact of globalization is not the same everywhere. The growth of the globalized economy is uneven 2- extortion - Much of this immigration is illegal. Organized crime profits in many ways. It provides smuggling services to illegal immigrants. 3- Organized crime provides small arms and large weapons systems for conflicts in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, often supplying both sides of the conflicts and sometimes taking their remuneration in the form of drugs. 4- 10

Organized Crime Networks or Transnational Mafias? 1- As the drug trade developed, extensive networks of exchange and trade were created among criminal groups worldwide. Rather than global Mafias, this international trade has stimulated small, flexible, discrete networks. This makes perfect sense. Organized Crime: Attributes, Characteristics, and Structure 2- Organized crime is a very different matter. It involves well-organized groups involved in a variety of criminal activities for the purpose of accumulating money or power. To understand organized crime we have to

1- - First, smaller networks enhance profitability by reducing production and corruption costs. - Second, smaller networks better control the flow of information about what a criminal group is doing and how it is doing it, reducing the risk of law enforcement interference in the daily business of organized crime. 2- get away from the view of the individual perpetrator - organizational structure, the way in which individuals join together and coordinate their activities to engage in criminal enterprises, becomes the vital consideration.

The Cohesion of Criminal Organizations 1- we can identify three major factors, which keep organized crime networks together: 2- Once again the empirical research points to three major concerns with regard to the size (the number of participants) and the scope (the geographical reach of organized crime groups): 3- How do organized crime networks handle communications and coordination of activities? 4- How do organized crime networks relate to their external environment (i.e., law enforcement, community residents, businesses, politicians)?

1- - Personal affiliations (childhood or prison friendships, locality relevance, extended family relations) - The drive for profits - Organizational fit (skills, financing, political connections needed to conduct business) 2- - Efficiency of management and communication. What is the maximum number of participants that can be handled in a secure communications system; how are individual participants' tasks and functions monitored? - Corruption costs. The greater the geographic area covered, the greater the costs of neutralizing law enforcement agencies. - Logistics. What is the optimum size and scope for the transfer of goods, money, and the movement of network participants? 3- Monitoring employee performance is also an issue in a business that is primarily dependent on cash transactions and the need for discretion in how business is conducted. Once again this can be done by frequent contact or by the use of complex and expensive communications technology. 4- Maintaining positive community relations is vital to most organized crime networks. That means providing services to the community, charity, protection from predatory crime, and jobs (often sources of secondary disposable income).

Standard Hierarchy 1- characteristics

1- - A standard hierarchy is a single organized crime group, - usually led by a single powerful individual. - These organizations have clearly defined roles, a readily identified chain of command, - a hierarchy that is designed to provide a strong system of internal discipline. - Violence is an integral tool of both legal and illegal businesses, - these groups usually operate in clearly defined geographical areas. -These organizations have a tight hierarchical structure with a single leader and two deputy leaders. The deputies are in charge of illegal activities. One deputy is responsible for drug trafficking; the other is responsible for other smuggling operations. In addition, a designated group of members are in charge of security and serve as bodyguards for the group's leader. - A particularly good example of a standard hierarchy is an organized crime group in Lithuania referred to by law enforcement officials as the Cock Group. This organization has a well-defined hierarchy and common social identity (prison experience)

Rules of Conduct - It can be argued that these rules might be a value system, rather than a formally organized set of operating instructions for guiding the bureaucratic organization 1- rules of conduct follow:

1- - Be loyal to members of the organization. - Do not interfere with each other's interests and do not be an informer. - Be a man of honor and always do right. - Respect women and your elders. Do not rock the boat. - Be rational. - Be a member of the team. - Do not engage in battle if you cannot win. Be a stand-up guy. - Keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut. - Do not sell out. - Have class. - Be independent. - Know your way around the world

Forms of Organized Crime 1- The UN research delineated five ideal types of criminal organizations, ranging from the most traditional forms of organized crime to newer, modern organized networks - The first three types, delineating hierarchical structures, are closest to the traditional forms of organized crime we have been discussing, and the last two, core groups and criminal networks, are closest to the forms of organization we can expect to be most prevalent in an emerging global economy.

1- - Standard hierarchy - Regional hierarchy - Clustered hierarchy - Core group - Criminal network - These are, of course, ideal types. Not all criminal organizations will conform precisely to a specific type, but most will have the predominant characteristics of one of these types.

Definitions in the Scholarly Literature 1- historian and criminologist Alan Block tells us that 2- Joe Albini, in his classic work American Mafia: Genesis of Legend, tells us that organized crime is 3- Anthropologist Francis A. J. Ianni, who studied organized crime from inside the Bonnano "crime family," offers this definition: 4- Once again there are similarities in these definitions:

1- "organized crime is both a social system and a social world. The system is composed of relationships binding professional criminals, politicians, law enforcers, and various entrepreneurs" 2- any criminal activity involving two or more individuals, specialized or nonspecialized, encompassing some form of social structure, with some form of leadership, utilizing certain modes of operation, in which the ultimate purpose of the organization is found in the enterprises of the particular group" 3- "I have defined organized crime as an integral part of the American social system that brings together a public that demands certain goods and services that are defined as illegal, an organization of individuals who produce or supply those goods and services, and corrupt public officials who protect such individuals for their own profit or gain" 4- - Organized crime involves social relationships, informal social structures, and "networks" of individuals. - Organized crime groups are flexible, ephemeral, continually changing, highly adaptable to market conditions and their social and political environments. - Organized crime is involved in the provision of illicit goods and services for the purpose of realizing a profit. - Organized crime certainly involves corruption, but the emphasis on who is the corrupter is very different. The suggestion is that corruption is inherent in the political and economic systems and organized crime makes use of those corrupt relationships. - Organized crime is integral to the society in which it operates. Social, political, and economic systems create organized crime in the image most compatible to that society.

Two Empirical Conclusions The propositions that can be derived from an analysis of the structure of organized crime support two conclusions that can be drawn from the available empirical evidence. Therefore, both the empirical evidence and the extant body of organizational theory suggest two basic propositions about the structure and conduct of organized crime's illicit enterprises. Inherent in this approach are the assumptions that (1) such a conspiracy or conspiracies exist, maintain a criminal monopoly in the marketplace, and follow a fixed, detailed, operating strategy; and (2) these criminal conspiracies are controlled by bosses at the very top of their hierarchies, with a chain of command that passes orders related to specific criminal tasks down to workers.

1- All criminal enterprises exist in relatively hostile environments primarily as a function of their illegality. As a result of functioning in a hostile environment, criminal enterprises avoid complex technology and stay small in size with little organizational complexity, formality (i.e., formal rules, procedures, chains of command) is lacking, and the organizations are based on mutual understandings and a relatively discrete and concise set of operating procedures. 2- All criminal enterprises exist in relatively uncertain environments, both as a function of the illicit market and the uncertain and changing nature of law enforcement policies and public attitudes. As a result, the danger of structural elaboration for criminal enterprises increases as the degree of uncertainty increases. However, the uncertainty of the environment requires that organizational structures be informal, with decentralized decision-making authority.

Block's Description of Enterprise and Power Syndicates 1- . He found that organized crime became more centralized and exhibited a greater degree of hierarchical structure during this period, but he found absolutely no evidence of the development of a 2- Block found that organized crime was dominated by two different types of criminal syndicates: (Block 1983: 13). - Simply defined, enterprise syndicates are groups of 3- Block argues that because they had to distribute illicit goods and services to thousands of customers, enterprise syndicates tended to be ---in terms of the number of participants, and they tended to have a ---of command, some centralization of authority, and a well-defined 000. 4- power syndicates are "---structured, extraordinarily ---associations centered around violence, and deeply involved in the production and distribution of informal power" (Block 1983: 13). - They have ----because they have no clear production or distribution task to perform. - The only organizational goal of a power syndicate is to use ---to maintain power over other organized crime groups. 5- What Block found, which contradicts any notion of a centralized, monopolistic Cosa Nostra, was that power syndicates were extraordinarily disruptive in the illicit market, tended to last for only very short periods of time, and made their own demise inevitable, while enterprise syndicates were able to go on and on, delivering goods and services to an eagerly consuming public.

1- Cosa Nostra or any other national crime syndicate in that period. 2- enterprise syndicates and power syndicates - criminal entrepreneurs organized for the purpose of producing and then distributing illicit goods and services, such as drugs, gambling, and prostitution. 3- large, hierarchy , division of labor 4- loosely ,flexible, no clear division of labor , extortionate means

The Sinaloa Cartel 1- Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera, known by various aliases, including "===," became infamous for his leadership of the Mexican organized crime syndicate known as the Sinaloa Cartel 2- The Sinaloa Cartel shared drug transportation routes and obtained drugs from various Colombian drug trafficking organizations, in particular the Colombian --- ,---,--- 3- As one of the principal leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, ---also oversaw the cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana smuggling activities by the Sinaloa Cartel 4- To evade law enforcement and protect the enterprise's narcotics distribution activities, Guzman Loera and the Sinaloa Cartel allegedly employed various means, including the use of "sicarios," or --- who carried out hundreds of acts of violence in Mexico, including murder, to collect drug debts, silence potential witnesses, and prevent public officials from taking action against the cartel.

1- El Chapo 2- Norte del Valle Cartel, the Don Lucho Organization, and the Cifuentes-Villa Organization 3- Guzman Loera 4- hit men,

Organizational Theory and Organized Crime Some efforts have been made to explore the organization of criminal enterprise through empirical investigation. From these studies have emerged two consistent themes that can form the basis for further research and exploration:

1- Groups engaged in criminal enterprise are loosely structured, flexible, and highly adaptable to environmental impacts. These enterprises respond readily to the growth or decline of a market for a particular illicit good or service and to the availability of new distributors and manufacturers. 2- Organized crime is a business and has many similarities to legal businesses. However, because organized crime conducts its business in the illegal marketplace, it is subject to a series of constraints that limits and defines its organizational structure, size, and mode of operation. Small, fragmented enterprises tend to populate illegal markets. Two basic facts of the illegal market cause this. The first is that a small number of employees and organizational segmentation minimize exposure to law enforcement.

Problems Created by Organized Crime 1-If we can assume that every crime has a victim, who are the victims of organized crime activities?

1- It could be argued that the public is the most visible victim of organized crime. Whenever the organized criminal makes money through thievery, violence, or swindling, the public loses 2- Clearly, criminal associates are often victimized by organized crime members, 3- law-abiding citizens are also victimized in a number of ways. - first, citizens are sometimes the direct victims of organized crime enterprises (violence, extortion, intimidation, etc.). - Second, billions of dollars of tax revenue from organized crime go uncollected (estimated at $37 billion in lost taxes every year), resulting in higher tax rates for law-abiding citizens. - Third, expenses related to law enforcement, criminal prosecution, and imprisonment of convicted members create a substantial drain on the economy of any community 4- Organized crime's participation in the realm of legitimate business, which has occurred since the early 1930s, has resulted in an additional economic impact.

Structural characteristics of organized crime hierarchies and organized crime networks. 1- organized crime hierarchies 2- organized crime networks. 1- Leadership 2- Authority structure 3- Division of labor 4- Rewards (money, power, and status) 5- Size 6- Internal discipline 7- Code of conduct 8- Internal disputes 9- Public knowledge 10- Group membership 11-Violence 12- Geographic scope 13- Reorganization (arrest, death, retirement)

1- Leadership 1- A single leader or a very small leadership group. 2- No designated leaders. Networks are defined by the illicit entrepreneurial activities of key individuals in the network. Key individuals may simply be entrepreneurs who serve as nodal points around which network participants perform their tasks. Key individuals may be a relatively stable group of core network members, who bring others into the network as their skills, resources, or talents are needed. Key individuals may not regard themselves as being members of a criminal group, and may not be regarded as being a criminal group by outsiders. 2- Authority structure 1- A clearly defined vertical distribution of power and authority. 2- Characterized by a flat, horizontal structure. Skills, contacts, or financial resources determine prominence and importance. 3- Division of labor 1-There is a relatively clear allocation of tasks and "job" descriptions. 2- Networks consist of relatively manageable numbers of individuals, although in many cases different components of the network may not work closely with (or even know each other) but be connected through another individual or individuals 4- Rewards (money, power, and status) 1-Determined by position in the hierarchy. 2-Rewards are negotiated and are commensurate with effort, investment, and job performance. 5- Size 1-Variable from as few as 20 members to organizations with hundreds of members. 2-Composed of a limited number of individuals. Small size enhances security, ease of communication, and monitoring of network activities. 6- Internal discipline 1-Strong system of internal discipline and control, surveillance of members, coercion. 2-organizational coordination rests on trust, business relationships, and the reputations of participants. 7- Code of conduct 1- Some form of internal code of conduct, although this may be "understood" rather than formally recorded 2- Working relationships grounded in rules and informal understandings. 8- Internal disputes 1- Resolved by administrative fiat from the top of the hierarchy. 2- Internal disputes are resolved through communication, negotiation, and recognition of common interests. 9- Public knowledge 1-The public and law enforcement officials usually know organized crime hierarchies by a specific name. 2- Low public profile and seldom are known by a name to consumers, the public, or law enforcement agencies. 10- Group membership 1-Often determined by strong social or ethnic identity criteria. 2-Personal loyalties, friendships, and ongoing business relationships. Connections between individuals in crime networks endure coalescing around a series of criminal projects. Crime networks are loosely organized, with the activities of the leading practitioners constantly interchanging and a broader network of individual criminal contacts being drawn upon in the case of specific criminal operations. 11-Violence 1-Violence is essential to the criminal enterprises of hierarchies. 2-Less inclined to use violence. 12- Geographic scope 1- Usually operate and have their greatest power in clearly defined geographical territories. 2- Varies depending on market and illicit enterprise. 13- Reorganization (arrest, death, retirement) 1- Organization ends with members joining other groups, moves members up in the hierarchy, or splits into smaller units. 2- Networks re-form after the exit of a key individual(s). Membership is extremely fluid. If a participant retires, moves on to other activities, or is arrested, the network simply re-forms itself around new individuals and activities.

Organized Crime as a Community Social Institution - An important focal point for understanding organized crime is available in a body of literature viewing the community as a social system - First, it recognizes a community's organization of social activities, rather than geographic or legal boundaries. - Second, it conceptualizes locality relevance dimensions of community in terms of access points to the social activities and functions necessary for daily living. Specifically, Warren identifies five major community functions having locality relevance:

1- Production-distribution-consumption 2- Socialization 3- Social control 4- Social participation 5- Mutual support - The failure of the production-distribution-consumption function is the key element for organized crime's existence. - The legitimate market's failure to serve sizable consumer populations is responsible for the existence of most vice operations. As a consequence, organized crime capitalizes on market voids and profits from services to these consumers.

To begin, the very genesis of nontraditional organized crime can be attributed to several distinctive factors, most of which became apparent during the early 1970s. These factors include the following:

1- Profound social, political, and economic changes in the drug-producing and drug-consuming nations had combined to accelerate and intensify the spread of drugs. 2- Mobility within and between consuming and producing nations, aided by cheap, readily available international transportation, had vastly increased. - There was also a huge immigration from South America and the Far East to the United States. 3- In the opium-producing countries, many peasants and urban workers had surplus time for the work needed to sustain the drug traffic. 4- In the consuming nations, old restrictions against many types of behavior, including the taking of drugs, had declined sharply.

In general, these scholars have three overarching concerns with the journalistic handling of organized crime: (1) the superficiality of the coverage (2) the sensationalism in selecting stories to cover (3) the tendency to create reality and reproduce the state's viewpoints on organized crime - A key element of this concern is the charge by some critics that journalists uncritically report information provided by state social control agencies This is of concern for several reasons. - First, the state has a genuine interest in promoting an image of organized crime that has close correlation to its enforcement policies and its political interests. - Identifying law enforcement agencies and government officials as sources is troubling for three reasons. - First, it affects the credibility of the information in the stories. There is a real question about how much the government actually knows and how much accurate information government sources have at their command - Second, there is a troubling tendency of the state to release information known to be inaccurate as part of disinformation campaigns aimed at specific organized crime groups. - Third, of course, it is highly unlikely that the state would release information or its agents would provide sourcing that directly contradicted the state's position on organized crime or that questioned the efficacy of enforcement efforts, support for legislation, and support for funding.

1- Superficiality. Critics see superficiality in the media's handling of organized crime manifested in four different ways. First, Smith asserts that media coverage provides very little substantive knowledge or analysis of organized crime. A corollary to Smith's criticism of superficiality is the view that news coverage of organized crime is usually treated by the media more as entertainment for popular consumption than as serious news - Morash and Hale (1987: 147) have suggested that inadequate sampling of both organized crime groups and activities contributes greatly to the problem of superficiality. Finally, critiques of the superficiality of media coverage of organized crime have suggested a strong tendency on the part of the media to emphasize discrete and isolated events in their coverage, rather than organizational dynamics and interrelationships in the market 2- Sensationalism. The second overarching criticism of media coverage of organized crime is that it tends to be sensational and to focus on notorious individuals and events (Martens and Cunningham-Niederer 1985; Potter 1994). Notoriety can relate to a group, clearly demonstrated by the frequency of mentions of Cosa Nostra and Mafia groups in news stories, movies, and books. It can also be related to individuals who are notorious in the tradition of Al Capone or Lucky Luciano. For a while, the mantle of notoriety rested most heavily on the shoulders of John Gotti, the alleged head of a New York Cosa Nostra family. 3- Creating reality. Finally, the media has been criticized in their coverage of organized crime for creating their own social reality of notorious gang leaders; conspiratorial, exotic, and alien organized crime; and a world of illicit business controlled by the wanton and often random use of force and violence. Not surprisingly, some critics contend that this is a social reality that closely reflects the state's view of organized crime. Integral to this claim is the charge that the information that journalists generate is suspect because it is not subjected to methodologically rigorous controls

Specialized Supporters 1- what are they 2- These persons, such as 3- Unlike the members of the criminal group and the protectors, specialized support people

1- The criminal group and the protectors rely heavily on skilled persons 2- pilots, chemists, arsonists, and hijackers, provide contract services that facilitate organized crime activities. 3- do not share a commitment to the group's goals, but are still considered part of organized crime.

Understanding the Mafia 1- commonly associated with 2- meaning 3- origin

1- The organization most commonly associated with organized crime is the Mafia, 2- the word Mafia did not appear in print until the mid-1860s and was thought to be understood by most Sicilians. - Part of the dialect used in the poorer districts of Palermo, Sicily, Mafia and mafioso commonly referred to beauty, perfection, grace, and excellence, but when applied to a man, mafioso "connotes pride, self-confidence, and vainglorious behavior" - By the mid-nineteenth century, the term mafioso had become synonymous not only with crime but also with a certain type of criminal behavior and attitude 3- Some historians trace it to the Sicilian struggle in the thirteenth century against French rule - Others suggest that the term originated in 1282 as a battle cry of rebels who slaughtered thousands of Frenchmen after a French soldier raped a Palermo maiden on her wedding day.

Managing Relationships between Organized Crime Networks 1- Organized crime faces some major impediments to cohesion and integration of its activities with other organized crime networks. Illegal contracts are not legally enforceable Illicit Enterprise and Profit-Making 2- the key differences between organized crime and "legitimate" businesses is

1- There is a tendency for fragmentation to occur in illicit enterprises, which can lead to violence, particularly over competition for markets and territory. But this violence usually occurs only in the initial stages of development of a criminal enterprise, does not last very long, and is quickly replaced by cooperation and coordination as soon as it becomes clear that the market or territory has sufficient customers and money available to make a profit for everyone. - Market peace is very good for business. As a result, there is a high premium in the criminal underworld placed on trust, honesty, and loyalty. 2- organized crime often makes much of its profit from illicit goods and services, and organized crime is prepared to use illegal means and practices, including violence, to achieve its profit-making goals. - Like legal businesses, organized crime also seeks to gather and harness political power to assist in the conduct of its business. Once again, however organized crime is prepared to pursue that goal, if necessary, through recourse to illegal method

The Criminal Group 1- In the globalized economy, computer experts and financial advisors are every bit as important to organized crime groups as are drug pushers, bookies, and prostitutes. 2- A nagging and persistent issue with regard to the structure of the criminal group has been the unfortunate corporate analogy utilized to describe organized crime's decision-making structure. - As we have seen, such a traditional view of organized crime is fundamentally flawed. 3- we recognize the fact that the older traditional forms of organized crime, such as Mafia-type organizations, if they ever existed, are now an endangered species, no longer useful in a globalized world economy.

1- These individuals are brought into a crime network as their services are needed 2- This traditional definition stresses the role of bosses, analogous to corporate CEOs; - a commission, roughly equivalent to a corporate board of directors; - capos, who would make up the middle management level of a bureaucracy; and - soldiers, who are the workers actually carrying out illegal activity. 3- Just like legitimate corporations, organized crime groups today are actually loose networks of entrepreneurs - The need for a boss is long gone

Is There a "Working" Definition of Organized Crime? 1- the United Nations (UN) brought together a group of academics and law enforcement agencies to formulate a working definition of organized crime. 2- However, they did agree on a working definition of an "organized criminal group." That definition described an organized criminal group as a

1- They failed 2- "structured group of three or more persons existing for a period of time and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offenses in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit."

Rather, there is a collectivity of criminal organizations that demonstrates a few well-defined patterns. Thus, several conditions that seem to lend cohesiveness to modern-day drug trafficking organizations exist: vertical integration, alternative sources of supply, exploitation of social and political conditions, and insulation of leaders from the distribution network. 1- Vertical integration. 2- Alternative sources of supply. 3- Exploitation of social and political conditions. 4- Insulation of leaders from the distribution network.

1- Vertical integration is illustrated by the major international trafficking groups such as the Colombian cartels and domestic criminal groups such as outlaw motorcycle gangs, which often control both the manufacturing and wholesale distribution of drugs. Also, city-based operations, such as the California street gangs, which concentrate on domestic distribution and retail sales, represent organizations with operations that are more directly linked to the end-user than are the Colombian cartels or the motorcycle gangs. 2- Among the various types of organizational structures and operational types, most have common distribution channels and operating methods. Most groups acquire the primary illicit drugs outside the United States. Exceptions are marijuana and certain drugs made in domestic clandestine labs. Consequently, distribution channels are long and complicated. 3- Drug trafficking organizations today demonstrate a willingness to capitalize on vulnerable social and economic milieus. This occurs, for instance, in inner-city areas and even entire countries where investors in labor markets are willing to take risks to partake in the huge profit potential offered in drug trafficking operations. Generally, most players drawn into drug trafficking are expendable, provided that the leaders remain untouched. The leaders can then choose from a large pool of unskilled labor those who are willing to take personal risks and who can be taught one or two menial duties in the trafficking system. Certain traffickers have even demonstrated that they can manipulate market conditions to make trafficking more profitable. 4- The organizational structure of a drug trafficking organization can be described as a solar system with the leaders at the center. Only these leaders (or kingpins) see the organization as a whole. Trafficking leaders strive to minimize any contact with drug buyers or the drugs themselves as a strategic effort to insulate themselves from governmental detection. Orbiting the leader are many different individuals who serve various functions (e.g., money launderers, enforcers, attorneys), each of whom has other people orbiting him or her, and the cycle continues.

Cressey's Cosa Nostra Theory 1- described organized crime as having a ---not unlike that adopted by governmental bureaucracies, such as police departments and federal law enforcement agencies. 2- According to Cressey, the primary unit of La Cosa Nostra is the ---, which embodies ---members of Italian ancestry. The family must abide by ---that prohibits members from revealing organizational secrets and that authorizes violent punishment for those who violate the code. 3- Cressey has suggested the existence of a hierarchy within the Mafia that facilitates the flow of power and expectations of members. Included in the hierarchy are the boss, the consigliere, the underboss, the caporegime, and the soldiers.

1- bureaucratic structure 2- family, male, a code of conduct 3-

Protectors 1- Protectors include 2- As a direct result of the protectors' efforts, the criminal group is insulated from both --- - This component of organized crime represents what both police and members of the criminal group have called the ---referring to the advantage that organized crime has over legitimate businesses. 3- ----, the central tool of the protectors, relies on a network of corrupt officials who protect the criminal group from the criminal justice system

1- corrupt public officials, businesspersons, judges, attorneys, financial advisors, and others who individually (or collectively) protect the interests of the criminal group by abusing their authority. 2- criminal and civil government actions. - edge, 3- Corruption

Nontraditional Organized Crime 1- The term nontraditional organized crime emerged during the 1980s and offers a different perspective on the understanding of the organized crime phenomenon. Just as traditional organized crime is associated with Italian American and Sicilian crime organizations, nontraditional organized crime is associated with

1- crime groups more commonly encountered by police, such as the Somalian pirates, "one-percenter" outlaw motorcycle gangs and Mexican methamphetamine cartels. While these groups (and others as well) are termed "nontraditional," they are encountered with such frequency that they are becoming more and more "traditional" in scope.

Chambliss's Crime Network Theory 1- William Chambliss's study of organized crime in Seattle depicts an overlapping series of ---with shifting memberships highly adaptive to the economic, political, and social exigencies of the community, without a centralized system of control (Chambliss 1978). 2 - Chambliss argues that whatever control there is in organized crime comes from far outside the criminal organization itself and is imposed on the illicit market by powerful -- 3- Chambliss conceives of organized crime as being a ---, the most powerful of whom are businesspeople, law enforcement officials, and political officeholders who direct the activities of criminal actors involved in prostitution, gambling, pornography, and drugs.

1- crime networks 2- political and economic forces in the community. 3- network of individuals

Albini's Patron-Client Theory 1- As a result of his study of organized crime in Detroit, Joseph Albini (1971) concluded that it was made up of ---who exchanged information, connections with governmental officials, and access to a network of operatives for the client's economic and political support. 2- The roles of client and patron fluctuated, depending on the ---and---were formed, dissolved, and re-formed with new actors. 3- Albini (1971: 229) suggested that organized crime actually consists of "---" in a "loose system of power relationships. 4- Organized crime groups resemble a ----in the community. The power of organized crime is found in the organizational qualities of loose structuring, flexibility, and adaptability. 5- Organized criminals occupy ---and are critically positioned facilitators in complex social relationships that permit clients to deal with the larger society. 6- Persons involved in organized crime and its operations in this web of social participation are not, in many cases, ---organization. The structure of relationships varies considerably with each participant.

1- criminal patrons 2- enterprise, and combinations , 3- syndicates 4- simple social organization or social-exchange network 5- intersections 6- directly part of an

International Definitions 1- THE UNITED NATIONS OFFICE ON DRUGS AND CRIME (UNODC): 2-

1- does not contain a precise definition of "transnational organized crime" nor does it list the kinds of crimes that might constitute it. - lack of definition was intended to allow for a broader applicability of the Organized Crime Convention to new types of crime that emerge constantly as global, regional, and local conditions change over time. - a group of three or more persons that was not randomly formed; existing for a period of time; acting in concert with the aim of committing at least one crime punishable by at least four years' incarceration; in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit 2-

1- Organized crime organizations manipulate and control --- ,----like labor unions, and legitimate industries like construction and trash hauling. 2- They bring drugs into our cities and raise the level of violence in our communities by ---and using graft, extortion, intimidation, and murder to maintain their operations. 3- their underground businesses include ---and--- 4- Organized crime groups also con us out of millions each year through various ---,and---. In 2013, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) estimated the economic impact of organized crime profits at approximately ---per year 5- today, with global concerns about ---, many believe that organized crime enterprises have either subsided or have been ignored by law enforcement while police focus on ---. 6- Part of the recent concern about organized crime is that it is becoming more and more ---and, as we will see in Chapter 8, in some cases it poses a ---threat. - This threat is especially evident in the breakdown of the former ---and the emerging role of opportunist Russian Mafia members 7- the 1990s and the early twenty-first century witnessed an increased sophistication in the crimes associated with the global drug trade, an increase in ---, and the smuggling of radioactive ---. 8- ---portrayed by the electronic and print media tend to present confusing views of organized crime.

1- financial markets, traditional institutions 2- buying off corrupt officials 3- prostitution and human trafficking. 4- stock frauds and financial scams - $1 trillion 5- terrorism, terrorist organizations 6- transnational , global , Soviet Union 7- computer-related crime, nuclear material 8- sensational images

Law Enforcement and Government Definitions 1- FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI): 2- THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE (IRS): 3- THE OMNIBUS SAFE STREET CONTROL ACT (1968): 4- THE TASK FORCE ON ORGANIZED CRIME (1987):

1- he FBI characterized organized crime as transnational organized crime (TOC). - The FBI defines transnational organized crime as ... groups [who] are self-perpetuating associations of individuals who operate, wholly or in part, by illegal means and irrespective of geography. They constantly seek to obtain power, influence, and monetary gains. - The FBI notes that there is no single structure under which TOC groups function—they vary from hierarchies to clans, networks, and cells, and may evolve into other structures 2- Organized Crime refers to those self-perpetuating, structured, and disciplined associations of individuals, or groups, combined together for the purpose of obtaining monetary or commercial gains or profits, wholly or in part by illegal means, while protecting their activities through a pattern of graft and corruption. 3- one of the most important pieces of federal anticrime legislation, tells us that "'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" 4- Organized crime is a society that seeks to operate outside the control of the American people and their governments. 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.

The Commission 1- In 1986, the PCOC suggested the existence of a ---that links the most powerful Mafia bosses to one central authoritative body. 2- The purpose of the commission is to ---disputes between families, ---new members for initiation, authorize the ---of family members, facilitate ---between families, and ---between U.S. and Sicilian Mafia factions. 3- Although most corruption efforts seem to focus on ----of social control organizations, such as patrol officers, it is in the best interest of the crime organization to corrupt any public or political figure.

1- national commission 2- arbitrate , approve , execution , joint ventures , manage relations 3-lower-echelon members

Reuter on Economic Constraints 1- Reuter's (1983) study of Italian organized crime in New York found that 2- He concludes that, rather than the officially depicted view of organized crime as a monolithic conspiracy, --- - The empirical research clearly reveals that organized crime is made up of 3- There are very practical reasons for these characteristics

1- no group exercises control over entrepreneurs in gambling and loan-sharking. 2- it is in fact characterized by conflict and fragmentation. - small, fragmented, and ephemeral enterprises. 3- - First, small size and segmentation reduce the chances that the enterprise will be caught and members prosecuted. - This is achieved, in part, by employing persons who know only about their own jobs and their own level of activity in the enterprise. - For the same reasons that organized crime groups choose to limit the number of employees, they also tend to limit the geographic areas they serve. The larger the geographic area, the more tenuous communication becomes, requiring either the telephone (and the threat of electronic surveillance) or long trips to pass on routine information in person, a most inefficient means of managing a business.

Smith's Enterprise Theory 1- In his book The Mafia Mystique, Smith (1974) argues that organized crime is nothing more than an extension of 2- Smith maintains that organized crime comes from "the same fundamental assumptions that govern ---: a necessity to maintain and extend one's share of the market." 3- Simply put, he conceives of organized crime as entrepreneurial activity that happens to be ---

1- normal business operations into the illegal market. 2- entrepreneurship in the legitimate marketplace 3- illegal

YOU DECIDE Are Movies a Form of Social Support for Organized Crime? 1- The boss. - A supreme leader known as the boss oversees all ---and has the ---on decisions involving virtually all aspects of family business. - Bosses are typically ---of the family who have proved their allegiance over a number of years during their affiliation with the family. 2-The consigliere. - A ----of the boss is the consigliere or ---, who enjoys considerable influence on and status in the family. - The consigliere, often a ---, serves the boss as a trusted advisor. 3- The underboss. - The ---position in the family is the underboss, who works at the pleasure of the boss and acts in his behalf when the boss is ---(e.g., sentenced to prison or ill). - Underbosses are trusted, older members of the family whose primary role is to ===to those occupying lower positions in the family. 4- The caporegime. - Rank and file under the ---begin with the caporegime or capos, who are considered --- - A primary role of a capo is to serve as a ---between the lowest-level members and the upper-level members of the family. - In doing so, the capo is the trusted ---through whom all communications from the boss flow to the lowest-level members, and vice versa. 5- Soldiers. - The ---members of the family are the soldiers. Soldiers, also known as wise guys, made guys, or button men, report directly to the capo and often operate at least one specific ----, such as loan-sharking, gambling, and drug trafficking. - The job of soldiers is to search constantly for ----for the family. - While doing so, they often become partners with other soldiers or even with nonfamily players in the community. Soldiers are required to ----or a percentage of their profits to the family in return for their affiliation with the family. - The soldiers direct hundreds of ---who work on behalf of the family. - Nonfamily members can be anyone who has ----the family. Therefore, they are not subject to ----, such as being of Italian descent.

1- organizational endeavors , final word , older members 2- close associate, counselor, lawyer 3- next highest , incapacitated , relay instructions 4- underboss, mid-level managers. , buffer , go-between 5- lowest-level , criminal enterprise, new sources of revenue , pay dues , nonfamily associates , something to offer, family membership restrictions

1- Media accounts of organized crime can be helpful, but the tendency of journalists to ---the issues and to emphasize the sensational creates problems for criminal justice students who are attempting to understand this phenomenon. 2- Autobiographies by former mobsters suffer from some of the same shortcomings, in addition to questions of ---. 3- In addition, there is no guarantee that government reports, court files, and data collected by regulatory bodies are free of ---or---on the most important problems relating to organized crime. Furthermore, ---to such information is not always possible, and law enforcement agents do not always cooperate with researchers seeking information. 4- As a solution, Cressey (1969) has recommended ---from intelligence sources, geographers, and anthropologists who attempt to understand the present by looking at the past. 5- Perhaps the greatest problem in understanding organized crime is not with the word crime but with the word ---. 6-

1- oversimplify 2- reliability 3- bias or concentrate, access 4- borrowing methods 5- organized 6-

Organizing for Profit 1- In the same fashion as legitimate enterprises, organized crime exists for one primary purpose: 2- These criminal means can range from extortion and corruption to acts of violence, although it should be noted that violence is primarily limited to Profit-Making Enterprises of Organized Crime 3- One of the most profound ways in which a globalized economy has changed organized crime is that it has vastly increased the number and types of --- 4- In a worldwide market, organized crime can become involved in virtually any enterprise. Of course, criminal organizations still dominate the sex industry and the drug trade. -

1- to make a profit. 2- the lower-level street activities of organized crime groups (e.g., retail drug sales). 2- enterprises from which organized crime may profit.

The Criminal Group 1- Representing the core of the organized crime unit, the criminal group is made up of 2- The following are characteristics of the criminal group.

1- persons who utilize criminality and violence and are willing to corrupt in order to gain power and profit. 2- - Continuity. The group recognizes a specified purpose over a period of time and understands that the organization will continue operating beyond the lifetimes of individual members. This group also realizes that leadership will change over time, that its members work to ensure that the group continues, and that members' personal interests are subordinate to those of the group. - Structure. The criminal group is structured as hierarchically arranged interdependent offices devoted to the accomplishment of a specific function. This means that the group can be either highly structured, like La Cosa Nostra, or extremely fluid, like the Colombian drug cartels. In any case, it is organized by ranks that are based on power and authority. - Membership. The criminal group membership is based on a common trait, such as ethnicity, race, criminal background, or common interest. Potential members of the group must prove their loyalty to the group. In most instances, membership requires a lifetime commitment. - Criminality. Like any industry, organized crime is dedicated to the pursuit of profit along well-defined lines. The criminal group relies on continuing criminal activity to generate income. The criminal group relies on continuing criminal activity to generate income. - Violence. Violence and the threat of violence are integral tools of the criminal group. Both are employed as a means to control and protect members and nonmembers associated with protecting the organization's interests. - Power and profit. Members of the criminal group are united in working for the group's power, which results in its profit. Political power is achieved by corrupting public officials. The group is able to maintain its power through its association with criminal protectors.

Social Supporters 1- grant ---and ---to organized crime in general and to specific members of the criminal group. 2- Examples are ---who solicit the support of organized crime figures, ---who do business with organized crime, social and community leaders who invite organized crime figures to social gatherings, and people who portray organized crime or its members in a ---.

1- power and the perception of legitimacy 2- politicians , business leaders , favorable light

User Supporters - Another vital component in the success of organized crime 1- This group is composed of persons who ---organized crime's illegal goods and services, such as ---.

1- purchase - drug users, patrons of bookmakers, and prostitution rings, and people who knowingly purchase stolen goods

1- Cressey also pointed to some difficult research issues with regard to organized crime. For example, he noted that the most dangerous hurdle to understanding organized crime is the ---surrounding it. Organized crime groups are difficult to ---and ---by virtue of their covert nature 2- Smith (1990) criticizes Cressey's view of organized crime by suggesting that in understanding only Italian American crime families, one understands ---of the problem—and not necessarily the ---. 3- Smith (1990), "We could almost sleep well, except for the two concurrent crime stories that command our attention: 4- in Smith's view, --- or---, should be the focus of organized crime studies and research. Such focus would avoid stereotypes and emphasize similarities between criminal groups and legitimate enterprises. 5- Compounding the task of ----is the serious problem concerning evidence - Although such evidence is of considerable value in understanding organized crime activities, it also can be subject to different interpretations.

1- secrecy, identify and harder to scrutinize 2- only part, most important part 3- -(1) our national failure to control a drug trade in which the major traffickers are not Italian; and -(2) the rise in exorbitant white-collar crimes, either proven or still under investigation on Wall Street and the defense industry. - Put them next to the Mafia and ask yourself: What is organized crime—really?" Smith summarizes his hypothesis of organized crime by suggesting that the phenomenon be looked on as enterprises occurring along a spectrum of legitimacy 4- illicit enterprise, or illegal business 5- defining organized crime

What is Organized Crime? 1- countless investigations and governmental studies convinced some members of law enforcement and the media that organized crime is dominated by (but is not exclusively) a ---,---- criminal organization made up of criminals of ---—the Mafia 2- In contrast to this view, academics and scholars who have studied the phenomenon have countered that there is no single, dominant crime organization (Italian or otherwise) and that organized crime is composed of ----ethnic and transnational groups operating together or apart and in conjunction with --- AND ---- 3- much of the public's understanding of organized crime stems from --- , and ---during the 1950s, 1970s, and 1980s 4- identified as the Mafia and characterized as a predominantly Italian American phenomenon, this official view was first expounded by ----in an influential work based largely on official data collected by federal agencies. - criticized sharply for his overreliance on ---, which tended to misrepresent the nature, structure, and function of criminal groups.

1- single, monolithic, Italian descent 2- numerous , legitimate businesses and political entities. 3- televised congressional hearings and presidential task forces 5- Cressey (1969) , official data

Haller's Partnership Model 1- Mark Haller's (1990) research reveals that organizations such as those surrounding the Capone gang and Meyer Lansky's extensive operations were in reality a series of ---, usually involving several senior partners (Capone, Nitti, Lansky) and many junior partners, who sometimes conducted business in concert with one another and often conducted business separately. 2- Organized crime was not directed by Lansky or Capone in any bureaucratic sense, but was merely a ----and---with a wide variety of constantly changing partners.

1- small-scale business partnerships 2- series of investment and joint business ventures

Redefining Organized Crime 1- Traditional arguments about the structure, attributes, and characteristics of organized crime have come under even greater criticism in the twenty-first century, as 2- Letizia Paoli, an Italian sociologist doing some of the most important contemporary research on organized crime, has suggested that the globalization of international markets strongly mitigates against the 3- She suggests that these organizations, whose structure is often predicated on social relations other than ---, are no longer efficient structures for the organization of crime 4- American law enforcement agencies have been very slow to respond to the profound changes in organized crime brought about by globalization. On the other hand, --- 5- The National Criminal Intelligence Service (2005) describes organized crime as having four salient attributes:

1- the economic, political, and social conditions within which organized crime operates are undergoing radical changes.'' 2- utility of large hierarchical organizations like the Sicilian Mafia, the Yakuza, or Chinese Triads. 3- market dynamics 4- their European counterparts have radically altered their views of organized crime and its structure. 5- - An organized crime group contains at least three people. - The criminal activity the group engages in is ongoing and indefinite in duration. - The group is motivated by a desire for profit or power. - The group commits serious criminal offenses

Ianni's Kinship Group Model 1- As a result of two studies of organized crime, one on Italian organized criminals and the other on blacks and Hispanics, Francis Ianni argued that organized crime is nothing more than a ---"organized by action and by cultural values that have nothing to do with modern bureaucratic virtues" (Ianni 1973: 108). 2- Ianni maintains that organized crime is best explained by examining --- 3- He argues that organized crime groups are not the formal organizations that have been depicted by the ---theory: "Like all social systems, they have no structure apart from their functioning; nor do they have structure independent of their current personnel 4-This later work made three important points.

1- traditional social system 2- local kinship or ethnic social networks. 3- Mafia 4- - First, organized crime was certainly not limited to Italian American crime syndicates. - Second, prison friendships, gang associations, and community socialization processes were as important as ethnicity to organized crime's recruiting. - Third, Ianni suggested a theory of ethnic succession. In brief, he argued that every new immigrant group faces discrimination, lack of economic opportunity, and blocked pathways to power.

1- Today, the core of organized crime in the United States consists of ---groups operating as criminal cartels in large cities across the nation 2-Their membership is exclusively ---of---; they are in frequent communication with each other; and their smooth functioning is insured by a national body of overseers. 3- Organized crime is more organized and bureaucratic than most corporations. It enforces its "legal" code far more efficiently than the state

1-24 2- men of Italian descent 3- the biggest, most notorious, most bureaucratic, and conspiratorial of the lot are to be found in the 24 families of "La Cosa Nostra."

The differences between state-sponsored and scholarly definitions of organized crime 1- State Definitions of Organized Crime 2- Definitions from the Scholarly Research 1- Structure 2- Continuity 3- Goals 4- Means of achieving goals 5- Relationship to the state

1-Structure 1-Formal, disciplined, hierarchical structure 2- Networks, informal structures, social relationships 2-Continuity 1- Continuous and self-perpetuating 2- Ephemeral, continually changing, highly adaptable 3- Goals 1- Provides illegal goods and services for the purpose of making a profit 2- Provides illegal goods and services for the purpose of making a profit 4- Means of achieving goals 1- Relies on violence or the threat of violence 2- Integral to segments of society. Relies on heavy demand, social and political support 5- Relationship to the state 1- Corrupts public officials 2- Makes use of existing corrupt relations offered by state officials

Psychological Traits and Criminality Many different views regarding the connection between psychological traits and crime exist. The term personality can be defined as a phenomenon of behavior that is governed by one's emotions and thoughts and that controls the manner in which a person views life events and makes personal choices. Specific personality traits have often been linked to criminals, but whether certain personality traits are present in criminals is controversial.

A person's personality traits do play a role in that person's day-to-day decision-making. When examining criminal populations, a number of personality traits, such as anxiety, conduct disorders, depression, and short attention spans, have been identified (Farrington 1988). Such traits tend to make people especially susceptible to problems such as substance abuse, promiscuity, violence, and sociopathy. However, the same traits have been found among significant populations who have never been arrested for a crime.

Sutherland on Differential Association

According to Sutherland (1973: 5), criminal behavior is learned as a result of associations with others, and the propensity for innovating through criminality depends on the strength of these associations. Sutherland argues that criminal behavior occurs when definitions favorable to violation of the law exceed definitions unfavorable to violation of the law. Sutherland suggests that factors such as deprivation, limited access to legitimate alternatives, and exposure to innovative success models (i.e., pimps, gamblers, or drug dealers) create a susceptibility to criminal behavior. Sutherland viewed differential association as a product of socialization in which criminals are guided by many of the same principles that guide law-abiding people.

The Masseria and Maranzano Assassinations

After Frankie Yale's murder, Masseria achieved new power in New York, challenged only by Maranzano, who had begun hijacking truckloads of Masseria's liquor. Soon, Masseria decided to fight back, and the alleged Castellammarese War had begun

The Prohibition ERA (1920-1933)

Although moderate drinking was generally accepted during the eighteenth century, by the early nineteenth century some people had begun to perceive an increase in the abuse of alcohol. The American Temperance Society, founded in 1826, began gathering pledges of abstinence, marking the beginning of the temperance movement. In the 1840s, the Washington Temperance Society conducted revival-style meetings to encourage similar pledges. As early as 1846, the state of Maine was persuaded to outlaw alcohol, followed by similar attempts elsewhere. However, these efforts were hampered by the Civil War, and despite the passage of many liquor laws, the sale and use of alcohol remained widespread

this commission has been the subject of inordinate discussion based largely on evidence from mob informants, such as Valachi, and on wiretaps, such as the De Cavalcante tapes. Cressey (1969: 110-123) described the commission as performing these functions:

Appointing the boss of each family Approving new La Cosa Nostra members Settling disputes and acting as an interim boss in the absence of the family's boss Holding hearings and taking votes on issues

Bell's Queer Ladder of Mobility Theory

Bell's essay on the American way of crime, although dated, represents the classic formation of the queer ladder of mobility. An extension of the queer ladder theory explains that ethnic succession develops as one group replaces the other on the queer ladder of crime, while the earlier group moves on to respectability along with legitimate social status and livelihood. According to ethnic succession, Jews replaced the Irish in crime, Italians replaced the Jews, and blacks, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and Colombians are now replacing the Italians. Bell's theory seems reasonable, but some critics have argued that it lacks empirical support. Furthermore, it has been suggested that immigrants did not choose the queer ladder because of frustration or the few legitimate opportunities that were open to them, but because rare and exciting opportunities to wealth (i.e., bootlegging) were available. In other words, serendipity played an important part in routinizing nationwide syndicated crime.

The national Prohibition movement, also known as the Noble Experiment, was spearheaded by prohibitionists, who ostensibly believed that alcohol was a dangerous drug that destroyed lives and disrupted families and communities.

Consequently, they believed that it was the responsibility of the government to prohibit its sale. Between 1880 and 1890, a new wave of prohibition sentiment swept the Evangelical Protestant churches. Organized by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), the Anti-Saloon League of America, and the National Prohibition Party, prohibitionists pressured their local politicians for an amendment to the Constitution banning the sale of alcohol.

Sutherland's Principles of Differential Association

Criminal behavior is learned. The fundamental basis of learning criminal behavior is learned in intimate personal groups (e.g., gangs). Criminal behavior is acquired through interaction with other persons in a process of communication. The learning process includes the techniques of committing the crime and specific rationalizations and attitudes for criminal activity. General attitudes regarding the respect (or lack of respect) for laws are reflected in attitudes toward criminal behavior. A person becomes delinquent or criminal because of an excess of definitions favorable to violation of law over definitions unfavorable to violation of law. Differential association can vary in duration, frequency, and intensity. The processes for learning criminal behavior parallel those of any other learning process. Criminal behavior is an expression of general needs and values (as with noncriminal behavior), but is not explained by these needs and values. (Sutherland 1973)

Cultural Deviance Theories

Cultural deviance theories assume that slum dwellers violate the law because they belong to a unique subculture that exists in lower-class areas. The subculture's values and norms conflict with those of the upper class on which criminal law is based. The subculture shares a lifestyle that is often accompanied by an alternative language and culture.

The Dependent Personality

Dependent personality is also known as inadequate personality, passive personality, and asthenic personality. There are two particularly important characteristics of this personality type. The first is reflected in the definition of dependent personality as found in the 1987 edition of DSM-III-R (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual III—Revised), the manual of psychiatric diagnostic guidelines: "pervasive pattern of dependent and submissive behavior beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts." Persons with this trait have a history of poor social interaction and have been described as being "weak and ineffective, lacking energy, passive and nice but totally inadequate." The inability to interact successfully with people at an early age is carried into adulthood. Dependent personality types have maintained a relationship with a significant member of the immediate family—typically, the mother or father—well into their adulthood. - The second important characteristic of dependent personalities is the overcontrolled aspect of their personalities. As a rule, individuals falling into this category are unable to control their anger, frustration, and hostility. The emotional life of such people can best be described by comparing them to a very large, expanded steel coil.

Dewey's Mafia War Begins

Dewey, acting as a special prosecutor in New York City, was relentless, however, and pursued Schultz again in 1935. The new charge focused on Schultz's restaurant-protection racket and included the charge of murder. Schultz's problems with Luciano, Lansky, and Madden were reaching a head, however. They had moved in on some of Schultz's rackets, and when Schultz tried to reclaim them, he suspected that he had been double-crossed and responded by killing his own lieutenant with his bare hands. Like Capone, Schultz was too much in the public view and too ready to use violence to solve his problems. Such tactics were not good for business, and other organized crime figures became intensely concerned about the Dutchman. mmediately following the trial, he was turned over to Dewey, who prosecuted him on extortion charges associated with the bakery business. From these charges he received a sentence of 30 years to life. Buchalter was subsequently convicted on a murder charge and became the only organized crime figure in U.S. history to be executed.

Alignment with Legitimate Business - Organized crime groups inevitably seek profitable and safe investments. - Therefore, calculated movements into a community's commercial life through ownership of legitimate businesses are expected. - Participation in legitimate business dimensions of the production-distribution-consumption process serves several needs

First, legitimate businesses offer concealment opportunities for illegal activities. It is not unusual for these businesses to serve as pickup points for gambling operations, as disposal points for stolen goods, and as fronts for other vice operations. Second, these businesses provide money-laundering opportunities for illegal profits. finally, active participation in legitimate businesses enhances the existence of high degrees of integration with members of the business community

Philadelphia and the National Syndicate The history of organized crime in Philadelphia contradicts the idea of a Mafia-dominated syndicate at every point.

First, the gangs run by Boo Boo Hoff and Nig Rosen were certainly tied into some sort of national confederation, but it was a loose association of bootleggers and gamblers clustered around Meyer Lansky, certainly not an Italian-dominated national syndicate. Second, insofar as Rosen had a family, it was not territorially based, but operated in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland—at least—and always maintained the closest alliances with former members of the Bugs and Meyer mob. Finally, the Italian organized crime groups, such as those headed by Marco Reginelli in southern New Jersey and the Matteo brothers in Philadelphia, existed within the context of the Rosen mob. Certainly, no Italian national commission tried to tell Nig Rosen what to do.

Deterrence Theory Some theorists believe that crime can be reduced through the use of deterrents. The goal of deterrence, crime prevention, is based on the assumption that criminals or potential criminals will think carefully before committing a crime if the likelihood of getting caught and/or the fear of swift and severe punishment is present. As a rule, deterrents to crime are both general and specific in nature

General deterrence theory holds that crime can be thwarted by the threat of punishment. If people fear that they will be arrested, they will choose not to commit the criminal act. Capital punishment is an example of general deterrence. Although evidence indicates the contrary, the purpose of capital punishment is to discourage people from committing crime, because they fear that the state will put them to death.

The New York Mob

In February 2008, local, state, and federal law enforcement arrested 57 members of New York's La Cosa Nostra, including the top leadership of the Gambino organized crime family, one of the five major syndicates in New York. New York City is probably the best-known example of the emergence of Italian American organized crime in a single city. Prohibition provided significant opportunities for Italian criminals who had coalesced into two factions led by Joe "the Boss" Masseria and Salvatore Maranzan

The sentiments behind the Prohibition movement are vital to an understanding of the development of organized crime in America.

In his classic study of the Prohibition movement, Symbolic Crusade, Gusfield (1963) argues persuasively that the anti-alcohol movements had less to do with the evils of John Barleycorn than with a pervasive distrust and nativist hatred of recent immigrants. Contrary to the mythology of high school civic books, the citizens of the United States did not open their arms to the "tired and the poor" from foreign shores. In fact, they subjected immigrants, particularly those who were Catholic or non-English speaking, to widespread discrimination; denied them access to jobs, education, and medical care; and, at least initially, excluded them from the political system.

Conspiracy to Commit Crimes - Another vital category of organized criminal behavior is conspiracy, an agreement between two or more people to violate the law

In most cases, organized crime members work with each other for the purpose of selling drugs or stolen property, loan-sharking, gambling, and other activities.

Corruption

Indeed, without the surreptitious aid of public and private figures such as law enforcement officers, judges, prosecutors, mayors, bankers, attorneys, accountants, and elected and appointed political persons at all levels of government, the organized crime unit could not flourish

Lucky Luciano and New York's New Order

Luciano immediately became the most important Italian American crime boss in New York, partly because of his long-term alliance with Jewish organized crime leaders. Lucky sent word to all crime factions that they were welcome in the new order. There would be no more boss of bosses; rather, negotiation and conciliation would characterize all major decisions. Luciano and his syndicate decided that they could take over New York's independent brothels. He permitted the use of his name in this effort, and his syndicate members began to coerce independent prostitution operators into splitting profits with the mob. Ultimately, Luciano put together the largest combination of brothels in history. The flamboyance and outrageousness of organized crime in New York spurred the public into demanding action from public officials. Governor Herbert Lehman appointed a special prosecutor named Thomas Dewey With the help of prostitutes Presser, Brown, and Harris and dozens of other witnesses, Dewey was successful in building a case and prosecuting Luciano for prostitution in New York. Upon his conviction on these charges, Luciano was sent to prison for 30 to 50 years, the longest sentence ever handed down in a pandering case

The Eighteenth Amendment was passed in January 1919, followed nine months later by the passage of the Volstead Act, which provided an enforcement mechanism to the prohibition of alcohol.

Once in place, the law was enforced sporadically and met with considerable public opposition. Soon, bootlegging, speakeasies (illegal nightclubs), and smuggling flourished under the direction and dominance of local gangsters. It was estimated that Chicago had approximately 10,000 speakeasies in operation at any given time during the Prohibition era. As a result, a massive campaign to repeal the amendment was mounted and achieved success in 1933 with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment. Thereafter, the temperance movement faded. The need for a massive infrastructure to handle public demand for alcohol soon became obvious to many entrepreneurial criminals Prohibition required a concentration of power in criminal activity at two levels: within individual cities and states and on a national scale

Thomas Dewey and the Mob

One of the earliest gangsters to fall to prosecution for tax problems was Al Capone, who was found guilty of tax evasion in May 1932 and sentenced to 11 years in a federal penitentiary. It should be noted that, according to veteran organized crime reporter Hank Messick (1973), the Capone conviction was realized only after Jake Lansky, Meyer Lansky's brother, had suggested a tax prosecution to IRS officials and supplied them with at least some of the data necessary to secure a conviction.

The Antisocial Personality

One personality type that has been identified by the research in biopsychology is the sociopathic personality (or psychopathic personality). The sociopath is thought to be a dangerous, aggressive person who shows little remorse for his or her actions, who is not deterred by punishments, and who does not learn from past mistakes. Sociopaths often appear to have a pleasant personality and an above-average level of intelligence. They are, however, marked by an inability to form enduring relationships. Abrahamsen describes the sociopath (also called a psychopath) as someone who has never been able to identify with anyone else For the concept of sociopathic behavior to be useful in understanding criminality, it must be correlated with criminal behavior.

If we review these state-provided definitions, several themes become apparent:

Organized crime has a formal, disciplined structure. Organized crime is continuous and self-perpetuating. Organized crime engages in the provision of illicit goods and services for the purpose of making a profit. Organized crime relies on violence or the threat of violence. Organized crime corrupts public officials.

Cloward and Ohlin on Differential Opportunity This is summarized by Cloward and Ohlin's (1960: 106-107) argument based on differential opportunity: Many lower-class male adolescents experience a sense of desperation surrounding the belief that their position in the economic structure is relatively fixed and immutable. As a result of failing to meet cultural expectations of achieving upward mobility, conditions become ideal for socialization functions such as recruitment, screening, and training for organized crime to occur at the community level.

Patterns of criminal socialization probably have their origins in socioeconomic stratification, which relegates some people to environments in which they experience a sense of strain (Abadinsky 1981: 31). The strain is intense in environments that have traditionally spawned organized crime. Subsequent development patterns include identification and association with reference groups that formed as a result of criminal behavior. Sutherland (1973) suggests that factors such as deprivation, limited access to legitimate alternatives, and exposure to innovative success models (e.g., pimps, gamblers, or drug dealers) create a susceptibility to criminal behavior.

Learning Theories

Researchers from a number of disciplines, such as sociology and psychology, have studied how individuals learned deviant values and behavior within the context of family and friends. Experts suggest that how to become criminals and how to deal emotionally with the consequences of such activity are learned.

The Chicago Mob

Prohibition and the political machine in Chicago came together to create one of the most notorious criminal organizations in U.S. history. The political machine was in control of Chicago as well as New York City and Kansas City. Turn-of-the-century machine bosses such as William "Big Bill" Thompson and Mont Tennes changed the history of Chicago forever by creating and fostering a spoils system in which corruption was the common way of conducting daily business. However, it was newcomer Al Capone who caused Chicago to be epitomized as one of the most ruthless and crime-ridden towns in the nation.

Smith's Enterprise Theory

Smith (1980) has proposed an enterprise theory, which explains that organized crime exists because the legitimate marketplace leaves unserved or unsatisfied many people who are potential customers. The theory explains that economic enterprises involve both legitimate business and some types of criminal activity. Smith says that there is a range of behavior within which any business can be conducted. The legality of doing business is an arbitrary variable that can be changed by passing new laws. Doing so, however, does not necessarily result in a change of behavior. In other words, laws merely make legal behavior that was previously thought to be illegal, or vice versa. At the heart of enterprise theory (Smith 1980) is the hallmark of economics, the law of supply and demand, which the illicit drug trade can illustrate. With few exceptions, it is illegal to possess or sell certain drugs, but a substantial market exists for them. Organized crime groups, which enjoy considerable profits, supply this market.

Relative Deprivation

Some researchers attribute inner-city crime to relative deprivation. This ecological approach suggests that the inequality between communities where the poor and the rich live in proximity to one another creates a general feeling of anger, hostility, and social injustice on the part of inner-city inhabitants. Peter Blau and Judith Blau (1982) assert that poor inner-city youths, such as those in Los Angeles, New York, and Detroit, experience an increasing sense of frustration as they grow up and face poverty, while they witness those who are well-to-do in nearby neighborhoods.

Social Disorganization Theories

Some researchers link criminality to social conditions prevalent in neighborhoods. Many of them believe that the reasons crime rates are high in these areas are urban decay, a general deterioration of the ecology of inner cities, and general social and familial deterioration some theorists suggest that in these socially ravaged areas, the necessary social services, educational opportunities, housing, and health care are inadequate or totally unavailable, thus exacerbating the problem of disorganization and criminality.

Rational Choice Theory When we consider theories of organized criminal behavior discussed in this chapter, we consider why some people conduct themselves in a manner that potentially entails risk, personal injury, arrest, or imprisonment.

Some theorists believe that regardless of the reason for committing crime, the decision to do so is a rational choice made after weighing the benefits and consequences of the action These are just a few scenarios in which people make a reasoned choice and exemplify a theory of criminality known as rational choice. first emerged in the mid-eighteenth century and was originally referred to as classical theory. It was developed by the classical school of criminology through the writings of Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham. It perceived people as free agents who are able to make rational choices in virtually all aspects of their lives. This school views organized crime members as possessing free will and as being able to make rational decisions regarding their involvement in crime and wrongdoing. Policies stemming from this approach dictate dealing harshly and quickly with offenders in an effort to deter them from making such choices again. Little consideration was given to the offenders' backgrounds or the circumstances surrounding the crimes that they committed.

Criminological theory is rooted in the causes of criminal behavior.

Such theory considers the characteristics of individuals and society that result in crime. For example, we know that the cause of a murder could be an individual's psychological condition or something in the social environment. Whether a theory proposes an individual personality or social condition, experts agree that no single theory serves to explain all types of crime.

Suttles on Community History

Suttles (1968: 111) proposes that a "strong sense of history" is an important factor in the development process from participation in juvenile crime to organized crime. Suttles believes that this historical sense of community provides a strong sense of criminal heritage.

Taylor, Walton, and Young on Blocked Opportunity

Taylor et al. (1973: 97) argue that when opportunities to succeed are distributed unequally, consequential results include the adoption of illegitimate means of obtaining success associated with definitions of the American Dream. Considerable precedent for using illegitimate goals to achieve success exists in locations noted for the presence of organized crime. It is not unusual for some communities to have a history of illegitimate adaptation. Numerous families have ancestors who were involved in illegal efforts to organize unions or who were involved in an array of other illicit enterprises

The passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act in 1914 could have provided the additional stimulus that transformed isolated and localized drug rings such as Whaley's into national organized crime groups.

The attempt to control opiate distribution through the Harrison Act and the subsequent outlawing of opiates and cocaine through the bureaucratic machinations of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics left a huge drug market unserved. - Considerable evidence suggests that crime was becoming syndicated prior to the passage of the Volstead Act and the outlawing of liquor.

this view suggests that La Cosa Nostra is some kind of alternative state within a state. Some evidence suggests the existence of a commission that plays a role in settling disputes among Italian American syndicates, especially in New York. Incidents frequently cited are the exile of Bonanno and the Gallo-Profaci wars. Beyond existing, what did the commission actually do? As it stands, there are serious problems with the "commission" assertion.

The first problem is that the commission is a body without a plausible history. In essence, it is the Italian product of non-Italian developments. Did a commission really emerge from the Italian-Jewish-Irish bootlegging collaboration? If so, how did it become exclusively Italian? Of course, gang leaders met to discuss problems of common interest. Was the commission a new structure, set up perhaps to thwart Genovese's ambitions? What do we really know about the Five Families of New York? The earliest reference to them comes from the highly inventive speculations of the Bureau of Narcotics in 1952, when they isolated five or six main crime syndicates in New York (Costello, Genovese, Lucchese, Profaci, Anastasia, Buoncuore). The second problem is that, as we have seen, a commission does not fit the Philadelphia evidence. It suggests that Bruno was imposed on the city's criminal empire. A third problem is that if there is a commission, it intervened only at the very highest level. The idea of the commission reflects a New York perspective that is probably not appropriate for other cities.

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre

The massacre was ordered by Capone, planned by "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn, and carried out by two of Chicago's most notorious killers, Albert Anselmi and John Scalisi. - After ordering the massacre, Capone left Chicago for his Florida home, thus providing himself an alibi. - The massacre left seven dead on the floor of the garage. No one was ever tried for the killings, but Anselmi and Scalisi were murdered later by Capone himself.

Kefauver Committee (1957)

The popular name for the federal Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, formed in 1951. Followed Appalachian Incident Captured public through the new medium of TV & testimony of celebrities - - The official, government version of organized crime in the United States begins to emerge most clearly in the report of the Senate's Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, chaired by Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. - The committee was impaneled in 1950 and was charged with determining the existence of a national crime syndicate using the wire services to transmit the outcomes of horse races to bookies. The committee went far beyond that, however, when it claimed in its interim report that an international criminal conspiracy known as the Mafia, originating in Sicily, was responsible for organized crime in the United States. - The Kefauver Committee presented valuable information on organized crime, calling before it luminaries such as Meyer Lansky, Frank Erikson, and Nig Rosen. The committee's investigation undoubtedly was invaluable to the study of organized crime. - But what the committee did not do in any way was to demonstrate the existence of an international Mafia conspiracy. Senator Kefauver and his colleagues never heard any direct or indirect testimony supporting the Mafia model. - The Kefauver Committee exposed a pervasive network of organized criminals operating in alliances with local politicians, but it never found the Mafia

Merton's Theory of Anomie

The process by which organized crime provides a means for social adaptation begins with the basic definition of success. Merton (1938: 673) has argued that an emphasis on specific goals often develops in U.S. society. This emphasis becomes virtually exclusive and ignores appropriate means for achieving these goals. Sacrifices aligned with conformity to the normative order must be compensated by socialized rewards (Merton 1938: 674). Deviant acts become attractive when expectations of rewards are not fulfilled. According to Merton's anomie theory, aberrant behavior can be viewed as a symptom of the dissociation between "culturally defined aspirations and socially structured means." He argues that the emphasis on the accumulation of wealth as a symbol of success leads to a disregard for considerations of how that wealth was obtained

Siegel, Lansky, and the New York-Las Vegas Connection

The story of the evolution of New York organized crime is important in the development of big-time gambling. A major player in New York's organized crime was Benjamin Bugsy Siegel, a notorious, cold-blooded killer allied with Lansky, Buchalter, and Luciano. Siegel was thought by many to be a visionary. Aside from his own rackets, he had one particularly good idea. He wanted to build a combination luxury hotel and gambling resort in the middle of the desert. He even had a name for his dream: the Flamingo. due to Siegel's reputation as a gangster, the new Flamingo had the reputation of a place run by gangsters for gangsters. Rumors suggested that the games were fixed. This situation was exacerbated when Siegel slugged two people who uttered his dreaded nickname, Bugsy. In January, the Flamingo closed until the hotel facilities were completed. -The murder was quick, with the first shot hitting Siegel in the head, driving his left eye 15 feet to the opposite side of the room. Of the seven bullets fired, one tore through Smiley's jacket. Benjamin Siegel was dead. Virginia Hill quickly moved to Switzerland, where she later married and retired.

The Philadelphia Crime Family

This city provides a textbook case of a Mafia city in the organized crime literature. Official law enforcement agencies have produced a detailed history of Mafia supremacy in Philadelphia's underworld from Prohibition days to the present. The Philadelphia Crime Family is one of the most active Mafia families in America outside of the five families operating out of New York. Under the control of Angelo Bruno, between 1910 and 1980, the family enjoyed its most nonviolent and prosperous reign. Bruno was murdered in 1980 and Nicky Scarfo took over. He involved the family in the illicit drug trade which Bruno had refused to become involved in. Prior to Prohibition, Philadelphia played a key role in a massive drug-trafficking network headed by men with names like "Dopey" Bennie Fein. In the days of Prohibition, the bootlegging syndicate was led by Max "Boo Boo" Hoff, and its leadership was predominantly Jewish and Irish. Between 1930 and 1960, Philadelphia's organized crime was dominated by the Rosen mob, a Jewish-led gang with strong Irish and Italian components. The Rosen mob "corporatized" gambling and played a major role in heroin importation in the 1950s.

Rational Choice Theory Because offenders were considered to be rational thinkers, punishment for their crimes was based on the pleasure-pain principle.

This meant that the pain of punishment for the offense must outweigh the pleasure the offender received as a reward for committing the crime. So, in theory, the rational offender would realize that it was not worth it to commit the criminal act in the first place. Beccaria also espoused the idea that the punishment should fit the crime. Rational choice theory suggests that people who commit crimes do so after considering the risks of detection and punishment for the crimes (risk assessment), as well as the rewards (personal, financial, etc.) of completing these acts successfully. On the other hand, persons who do not commit crime decide that completing the act successfully is too risky or not worth the benefits

Alien Conspiracy Theory One of the most widely held theories of organized crime today

This theory blames outsiders and outside influences for the prevalence of organized crime in U.S. society. Over the years, unsavory images, such as well-dressed men of foreign descent standing in shadows with machine guns and living by codes of silence, have become associated with this theory. The alien conspiracy theory posits that organized crime (the Mafia) gained prominence during the 1860s in Sicily and that Sicilian immigrants are responsible for the foundations of U.S. organized crime, which is made up of 25 or so Italian-dominated crime families.

. Nearly a century ago splinter segments from Irish and Jewish immigrants also used organized crime to attain wealth and stature in their new country. Organized crime historian Mark Haller (1972) explains:

Those groups that became most heavily involved in organized crime migrated from regions in which they had developed deep suspicions of governmental authority . . . Within a community suspicious of courts and government officials, a person in trouble with the law could retain roots and even respect within that community. - Poor immigrants and their children often had vocational choices related to politics, labor unions, sports, entertainment, and businesses such as construction that often relied on political contracts. These businesses had an undercurrent of criminality and corruption, but immigrants were not forced to turn to a life of crime

today, organized crime includes the following:

Violent Mexican cartels who compete for control over the cocaine, marijuana, and methamphetamine trade; African groups in countries such as Nigeria that engage in drug/human trafficking and financial scams; Chinese Tongs, Japanese Boryokudan, and other Asian crime organizations; and Criminal enterprises based in Eastern European nations like Hungary and Romania.

the castellammarese war

War fought between Maranzano (from Castellammarese) and Masseria for power. The war caused a lot of bloodshed, including that of innocent citizens, so people wanted it to come to an end. It was clear that Maranzano had more control over the war but Masseria refused to sign a peace treaty. One of Masseria's associates, Luciano, had Masseria assassinated so that the war could end. Maranzano was then crowned boss of bosses, and continued to treat the mafia like a dictatorship. Luciano wanted it to be shaped like a democracy so he also had Maranzano assassinated, officially ending the Castellammarese war

Social Implications of the Enterprise Model

We are left therefore with a model of criminal enterprise in which these organizations are not centralized, formalized, or departmentalized. This model has profound implications for both research and law enforcement. This view suggests that scholars interested in unraveling the mysteries of the persistence and prevalence of organized crime should look to market forces at work in criminal entrepreneurship, not to people who have attained some degree of notoriety in the field. The view also suggests that law enforcement policy should attempt to disrupt the organizational environment of the enterprise, rather than jail mythical corporate masterminds believed to be manipulating the criminal enterprise from afar.

Benefits for Legitimate Business

in a significant number of specific situations businesspeople avail themselves of the services of organized crime. Relationships between fences and retail establishments, such as pawnshops and salvage yards, are particularly good examples. Additionally, organized crime's racketeering services provide businesses with potent weapons for harassing competitors or securing favorable employee contracts - Racketeering provides opportunities for collaborating with labor management in efforts to gain control of unions and their pension funds. - Harassment of business competitors - Extra capital for joint investment ventures - Opportunities for collaborating with management to control labor unions - Finally, businesspeople occasionally utilize organized crime's financial services in joint investment ventures.

Although some skeptics insist that the alien conspiracy theory was born out of hysteria incited by the media, it has received considerable support over the years from federal law enforcement organizations, public officials, and some researchers. It has been argued, however, that federal law enforcement organizations have self-serving reasons to promulgate this theory:

it explains their inability to eliminate organized crime; it disguises the role of political and business corruption in organized crime; and it provides fertile ground for new resources, powers, and bureaucratic expansion. In fact, almost a century of criminal investigations, public hearings, and studies by presidential commissions have produced conflicting information regarding the existence of the Italian American group known as the Mafia Ethnicity is a key to the alien conspiracy theory of the organized crime phenomenon. Many criminologists argue, however, that available empirical research indicates that this theory misinterprets and overstates the role of ethnicity in organized crime. Some evidence suggests that many organized crime groups consist of persons of a specific ethnic background who cooperate on a regular basis An apparent contradiction of the alien conspiracy theory is the simple fact that virtually every U.S. city had well-developed organized crime syndicates long before the large-scale Italian immigration of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. If Italians and other immigrants played a major role in developing organized crime, they were only joining and augmenting widespread crime corruption already native to the United States.

Special deterrence theory

penalties for criminal acts should be sufficiently severe that convicted criminals will never repeat their acts. For example, if a person arrested on a first-time marijuana possession charge is sentenced to spend 60 days in a boot camp designed for first-time offenders, the punishment is to convince him or her that the price for possessing marijuana is not worth the pleasure of using it. Although the effectiveness of deterrence is highly debatable and not supported by empirical evidence, some experts suggest that it can be effective. For example, Wilson (1975: 494) points out that most crimes are committed by a small number of people. Because some components of the criminal justice system, such as courts and corrections, embrace treatment instead of punishment, criminals are more willing to risk getting caught. He argues that if the expected cost of committing crime goes up without a corresponding increase in the expected benefits, would-be criminals will commit fewer crimes

the Black Hand

the Serbian terrorist group that planned to assassinate Franz Ferdinand Serbian nationalist/terrorist group responsible for the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand which resulted in the start of World War I. - Contrary to claims by journalists and some law enforcement officials over the years, the Black Hand was never a formal organization with any kind of national or international ties. Furthermore, it was never a secret society, nor was it ever tied to organized crime groups. Put simply, it was an extortion racket that preyed chiefly on Italian citizens, first in Italy and Sicily as early as the 1750s and later in the United States.