Controlling Organized Crime

Controlling Organized Crime Paper

Organized crime in the United States has been in existence since in the early twentieth century. Consequently, organize crime flourished around the time of Prohibition (national ban on the sale, and transportation of alcohol) in which it attracted all policymakers. Throughout the twentieth century, U.S. law enforcements struggled with “traditional” organized crime networks that were operating from the inside of the United States. According to Finklea (2010), it states, “the “traditional” organized crime networks included the Italian Mafia, Russian Mafia, Japanese Yakuza, and Chinese Tongs (p. 4). These criminal organizations were involved and performed a variety of illegal activities such as gambling, loan sharking, sell/buy narcotics, trafficking, extortion, prostitution, bootlegging, and fraud. Other prominent activities of organized crime groups were racketeering, theft, murder, and money laundering (Finklea, 2010).

With this said, this paper will help establish a thesis regarding the control of organized crime. It will identify the problems presented and the various relationships established by organized crime, describe the legal limitations associated with combating organized crime, include a critique of major federal laws along with strategies that support this effort and suggest a realistic solution to control organized crime by discussing and evaluating the effectiveness of organized crime. The reader will gain a better knowledge of what a criminal organization is, how it operates, and most importantly how U.S. law enforcements have developed a variety of combat tasks on how to help control criminal organizations.

Relationships and Problems Established by Organized Crime

As mentioned above, it is clear that organized crime groups are up to no good. They are constantly involved and perform a variety of illegal activities. They manipulate and monopolize financial markets, traditional institutions like labor unions, and legitimate industries like construction and trash hauling ("The Federal Bureau of Investigation", n.d.). Organized crime groups maintain a negative impact towards our communities by importing drugs into our cities, and by developing high levels of violence by buying off corrupt officials using extortion, graft, intimidation, and murder in order to help maintain their operation(s) running successfully. For instance, in 2009 Mexico’s city, Tijuana, became a ghost town after there was a high level of violent activity occurring. Due to the Tijuana Cartel wanting to control society and its rivals, the streets of Tijuana became a battle field. According to O'Conner (2011), it states, “There were running gun battles through downtown streets, bodies hung from bridges and a cartel henchman known as "the Stewmaster," who dissolved hundreds of corpses in vats of lye.” Everyone