Why Organized Crime Thrives

Abstract

America has never been able to build a sustained attack against organized crime. This inaction has been caused by many interlocking factors. Organized crime chooses crimi nal activities which are not reported by the compliant "victims." It provides services relied upon by business, labor, and politics. For noncompliant customers of organized crime, the criminals utilize the element of fear to nullify opposition. The public, and many officials, see only parts of organized crime's activities, and thus do not conceive it to be a priority problem. Organized crime has become categorized as a separate problem, when, in fact, it is closely related to professional crime, street crime, aggravation of ghetto conditions, and low-quality or corrupted criminal-justice personnel. The annual income produced by organized crime is twice that engendered by all other criminal activities combined. Sporadic law-enforcement effort has been government's only response, and law-enforcement officers receive no encouragement from the community and government officials. The alliance between organized crime and the so-called legitimate power structure in many communities defeats efforts to expose or minimize organized crime's influence. With business, labor, politicians, scholars, the citizenry, and much of law enforcement ignoring the problem, the program recommended by the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (hereinafter referred to as the National Crime Commission) to combat organized crime will not be implemented without national recognition and concern about this phenomenon.