Organized Crime

Issues in crime (Organized crime)

Organized crime has grown powerful in the public as demand has created larger markets for illicit goods and services supplied them. Organized criminals are involved in wide areas of criminal activity such as, selling illegal drugs, money laundering, immigration fraud, extortion, bank fraud, and pornography. The most successful organized crime groups are ethically based. The mafia organization have common interests, have some codes of conduct, and developed rituals. Organized crime refers to those who pressure obtaining monetary or commercial gains or profits by illegal means, while protecting their activities through violence and corruption. In organized crime criminals work together, competition is controlled, and there is stable climate for illegal activity. When the government makes prostitution illegal, it doesn’t mean that people will stop going to prostitutes, it just means there will be a group that will enter into the trade and take advantage of those services. That is what organized crime does; it provides the activities that people want that have become illegal. This also happened in prohibition when they made alcohol illegal. I am using rational choice theory analyze organized crime.

People join organized crime groups because they believe that the benefits of joining outweigh the costs associated with committing the crime. According to rational choice theory most of these people are going to do a cots benefit analysis before they commit a crime. For example someone might say my ethic group has been doing this for a few years and they make 7 million a year. I can be a part of that. They will think about the costs such as losing their family or going to jail for a long time. You will have a choice and one will be greater than the other. According to Gambetta’s rational choice modal people joined the Mafia because of the Soviet Union’s dysfunctional political structure. It created the necessary conditions that made the Mafia a rational choice for potential suppliers of protection. The assumptions of rational choice models do apply to the intentional actions of the Russian Mafia, but we are still far from being able to conclude that it is a complete theory of human behaviour because not all behaviour may be motivated by simple cost-benefit analysis.

According to Rational choice theory 5 components of casualty make crime more likely to occur: (1) Free choice (2) lack of fear of punishment (3) ineffective criminal justice system (4) available unguarded target (5) a situation with an opportunity presents itself. When to move from a communist system or the government loses control over property and law it leads to the increase of people owning assets. More people will own businesses. When people cannot trust the state to enforce property rights they will look for private protection. Somebody has to protect the businesses. Gambetta says the next thing that has to happens is suppliers of private protection have to emerge.  The suppliers come from the unemployed and eventually they join the mafia. It becomes a situation that is rational for both. People that were joining the Russian mafia were soldiers, unemployed, and cops. It was rational because a lot of Xk2B members would say what else am I suppose to do I was fired from the Xk2B and I was trained in violence that is all I did my whole life what else what I suppose to do? They were violent business owners. It was rational for people to use the services of the mafia because nobody else could protect them. From their perspective they can pay the government money to protect their business every year and get nothing in return or they can pay the mafia and get something in return. As long as there business functions every month then they don’t care.