Criminal Organizations: Vice, Racketeering, and Politics in an American City

A much-needed, well-researched overview of the phenomena of organized crime in the U.S. For half a century, law enforcement agencies have pursued and prosecuted organized criminals. We have established professional, well-funded agencies to investigate organized crime. We spend billions on "closing the borders" to the drug trade, "stinging" labor racketeers, and auditing tax returns of gamblers, yet organized crime continues to conduct business-as-usual. Despite the time, effort, and money expended, basic questions remain. What is organized crime? How much empirically verified information do we have? How much data is based on unfounded assumptions? How much depends on a criminal justice policy based on conspiracy and ethnic myth? If the model used to define the characteristics and activities of organized crime is flawed, the policies derived from that model will be similarly flawed. This book presents a detailed investigation of the organization and delivery of a wide spectrum of illegal goods and services in Morrisburg (a pseudonym for a city in a mid-Atlantic state). The model suggested is based on a simple truth: criminal enterprises come into existence, profit, and flourish because there is strong public demand for the goods and services they offer. The impetus behind organized crime is not a criminal conspiracy but simple market opportunity. The market constrains organized crime's structure, form and social perniciousness. The market and its environment are thus the most appropriate points of intervention in controlling organized crime.