Global Organized Crime

A 21st Century Approach

Mitchel P. Roth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317267171
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Criminología

In the maelstrom of globalization and cyberspace, organized crime continues to defy definition. A diverse array of activities is perpetuated by criminal organizations, criminal groups and associations, and gangs, and it is clear that one specific label is no longer adequate. This book offers a uniquely global approach to organized crime and the multitude of forces that shape it in the 21st century.

As well as discussing definitions of and the historical roots of organized crime, this book examines various forms of organized crime around the world in the US, Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean, Russia and Europe, Asia and Africa. This revised and updated new edition includes coverage of:

• the rise of the 'Ndrangheta in Italy and their global expansion;
• the impact of drug legalization on organized crime and the problem of methamphetamine;
• organ trading, money laundering, and animal poaching;
• changes in gang traditions and gangland penitentiaries;
• the decentralization of Mexican cartels, the growth of opium production in Myanmar, and the drug war in Africa; and
• the advancement of ISIS and the emergence of the Silk Road and the Dark Net.

This book is essential reading for students engaged in the study of global and transnational organized crime, with features including chapter overviews, key terms, critical thinking questions, and case studies.

Chapter 1
Defining and recognizing organized crime

Key Terms

• Racketeering
• Jonathan Wild
• Thief-taking
• Wickersham Commission
• Organized Crime Control Act
• Lexow Committee
• Tammany Hall
• Chicago Crime Commission
• Illinois Crime Survey
• Seabury Inquiry
• Amen Report
• Kefauver Commission
• McClellan Committee
• Joseph Valachi
• La Cosa Nostra
• Donald Cressey
• Oyster Bay Conference
• The Confederation
• President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (1967)
• Theft of the Nation
• President’s Commission on Organized Crime (1986)
• Joseph Albini
• Patron–client relationship
• Bureaucratic/Corporate Model
• Transnational Organized Crime
• Golden Age of Piracy
• Pirate Articles and Rules
• English Navigation Acts

Organized crime has existed in one form or another throughout much of recorded history. Maritime piracy, highway robbery, and banditry were precursors to modern organized crime, all products of rapidly changing conditions in earlier historical eras. As far back as 1931 and in the concluding years of the Prohibition era, The Saturday Evening Post opined,

There is really nothing new about it. Organized robber bands preyed on merchants in the past and exacted tribute from them. Pirates took their toll from commerce on the high seas. It is almost beyond belief, however, that in this present day [1931] the methods of the robber gangs can still be applied so successfully.

(Quoted in Pasley 1931, 258)

Although some of the characteristics of modern organized crime may seem familiar to these earlier groups—violence, hierarchy, strict rules and regulations, entrepreneurial activities, corruption of officials, and profit motivation—others, such as monopolization, longevity, racketeering and infiltration of legitimate business, restricted membership, and self-perpetuating leadership, reflect more complex and urbanized societies.

Prior to the great advances in transportation and communication technology in the 19th century, most criminal activity was a local or regional problem. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, first in England toward the beginning of the 19th century and then in other parts of the Western world, rural peasants flocked to newly urbanized settings in search of better jobs and sustenance. This, together with developments in faster forms of transportation and communication, hastened the evolution of longer-lasting and more efficient criminal networks, allowing them “to adapt to rapidly changing markets, consolidate their power, accumulate capital, expand from their original bases, and continue to operate in the modern world” (Lunde 2004, 17).

Jonathan Wild: A case study of early organized crime activity

The case of Jonathan Wild demonstrates the localized nature of organized crime activity in the Early Modern period. Toward the end of the 17th century, the profession of thief-taking, or bounty hunting, was created by the Act for the Encouraging the Apprehending of Highwaymen. Masked English highwaymen operating on horseback robbed seemingly at will along the roads leading into London. By most accounts, equestrian bandits killed less readily than their bipedal counterparts due to their ability to escape quickly. Although they occasionally engaged in gun battles with their victims or soldiers, treacherous accomplices and informers represented a much greater danger, as the chronicle of Jonathan Wild demonstrates (Howson 1971).

Without a regular police presence and suffering a recurring outlaw problem, the English government began offering “thief-takers” a £40 reward for the arrest and successful prosecution of any highwayman. On top of this, they were permitted to claim the highwayman’s horse, weapons, and other possessions (unless they were proved to be stolen). Initially, thief-takers were bandits who informed on their accomplices for the promised reward. Despite the best intentions of the new legislation, highway robbery continued undiminished (Pringle 1958).

During the 1720s, London experienced one of its sporadic crime waves. Prior to the inauguration of public policing and because most major criminals were protected from prosecution thanks to the corruption of various officials, the only response the government could muster was to begin offering rewards for the capture of robbers and the threat of the death penalty for most offenses. After Wild served a criminal apprenticeship with the London city marshal, he was well versed in the trade of receiving stolen goods. Subsequently, he set up an office near the Old Bailey, where he acted as agent between thief and victim. Wild had learned a very important lesson in the vagaries of crime—that the original owners of stolen goods were willing to pay the highest prices to retrieve their possessions. Wild improvised an ingenious system for receiving stolen goods based on one developed by the notorious “Moll Cutpurse” in the previous century. He improved the system by posing first as a private thief-taker who went after offenders to subsequently collect a reward once the objects were returned. He then organized bands of thieves whom he directed in his various schemes (Howson 1971; Pringle 1958).

A master of self-promotion, Wild would have engendered a certain amount of respect from modern urban gangsters such as Chicago’s Al Capone and New York Gambino crime family boss, flashy John Gotti, to be sure. By 1718, Wild regarded himself as that era’s “boss of bosses” or capo di tuti, taking the sobriquet Thief-Taker General as he exploited the limits of the law to the fullest. Some police historians consider his posse of thief catchers to be a precursor to early police departments, but Wild is better known for having elevated thief-taking to a science, and over his ten-year run he was credited with sending more than 100 criminals to the gallows. His success was ensured by his ability to set up for arrest and execution any thief who tried to compete with him. Treading the line between the licit and the illicit, he aided the law in his capacity as thief-taker while using the law to fatten his own coffers. Testament to his success was the fact that London highwaymen gave London a wide berth between 1723 and 1725, evidenced by the fact that none were hanged during this period. Wild enjoyed the protection of influential patrons, survived attempts on his life, and acquired massive real estate holdings. However, despite supporters who argued he helped control the crime problem, Wild was sent to the gallows in 1725 following the implementation of more punitive anti-thief legislation (Howson 1971; Roth 2005).

Question: Was Jonathan Wild involved in organized crime?

Since the early 1980s, most definitions of organized crime have included common characteristics, including:

• Structure
• Continuity
• Violence
• Discipline
• Involvement in legitimate enterprises
• Multiple enterprises
• Corruption
• Monopolization
• Sophistication¹

Of course, organized crime groups might share all or some of these features as well as others, but the consensus is that if a criminal group displays a number of these features, then it can be considered an organized crime group. In the chronicle of Jonathan Wild, we can discern a number of these characteristics, especially structure, violence, discipline, involvement in legitimate enterprises, monopolization, and sophistication. However, does this equate thief-taking in the 18th century with organized crime? What is clearly missing here is the continuity aspect identified with the better-known exemplars of organized crime activity. As Thief-Taker General, Wild dominated the London underworld for almost a decade, but, when he was gone from the scene, so was his organization, although other individuals would fill the void. Herein lies the dilemma for criminologists, journalists, policy-makers, and police authorities—it is virtually impossible to come up with a definition that stands the test of time. Organized crime groups are flexible enterprises that can change shape and structure to take advantage of opportunities. However, these opportunities are always changing, paralleling the development of new markets, consumer demands, and the changing legal climate. Thus, politicians, police authorities, academics, and governments continue to debate the definition of organized crime (e.g. Abadinsky 2007; Albanese 2004; Grennan & Britz 2006; Lyman & Potter 2004; Reichel 2005; von Lampe 2015).

What is organized crime? An international perspective

For more than a century, academics, government officials, journalists, and others have struggled to create a definition of organized crime that is internationally applicable. Organized crime scholar Klaus von Lampe has demonstrated the impracticality of this by constructing a website that lists more than 150 definitions of organized crime from around the world.² In the tumult of globalization, cyberspace, and the information superhighway, organized crime continues to defy definition. Organized crime groups, according to various theories and definitions, come in all shapes and sizes. It is clear that one shape or structure does not fit all. Indeed, it seems every country defines the problem differently, according to its own experiences. In some cases, the term organized crime can even be considered counterproductive in gaining a better understanding of criminal organizations and relationships between criminal actors. Ultimately, it becomes almost a fool’s errand to apply one label to describe the multitude of activities taken by criminal organizations, criminal groups and associations, gangs and so forth. From Europe to Africa, no one definition adequately defines the phenomenon.

The diverse historical and cultural experiences of different countries with organized crime often confuses the understanding of the phenomenon even further. That said, due to regional differences, cultures and different historical experiences, organized crime appears in such a variety of incarnations that any understanding of one form of organized crime does not help in the understanding of the many others (Madsen 2009, 13). Indeed, recent scholarship suggests applying the term organized crime to criminal organizations and professional criminals in such regions as Africa is “not a very useful description of their activity,” since it is often difficult to separate the activities of the African state, warlords, insurgents, and military organizations (Ellis & Shaw 2015, 505; Shaw & Reitano 2013, 8). Moreover, the term is “rarely used by Africans themselves, with only a few exceptions, such as in South Africa, where it is generally used to describe external rather than domestically rooted networks” (Ellis & Shaw 2015).

Moving from Africa to Europe, the organized crime landscape continues to defy definitional attempts as organized criminal activity becomes increasingly dominated by loose, undefined, flexible networks created by individual criminal entrepreneurs. Thanks to advances in technology and communication, modern criminals often act on a freelance basis, without being a member of a larger network or group. Like their “lone wolf” counterparts in the world of terrorism, criminals have discovered that organization and structure can be the Achilles heel of any criminal group (Council of Europe 2005).

In 1995, The Council of the European Union created a working definition of organized crime listing 11 criteria of criminal activity. In order for criminal behavior to fall under the purview of organized crime it must meet the following criteria, including numbers 1, 3, 5, and 11 below, plus at least two more:

1. an association of more than two people
2. who each perform individual tasks assigned to them
3. for a longer or undefined period of time (an indication of stability and potential permanence)
4. using specific methods of discipline and control
5. where the persons are suspected of having committed serious crimes
6. active at the international level
7. using violence and other means of intimidation
8. using commercial or commerce-like structures
9. committing money laundering
10. influencing politics, the media, public administration, the justice system, or the economy
11. motivated by the accumulation of money and power

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