organized crime

Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Organized Crime

a form of criminal activity carried on in bourgeois countries, primarily the USA, by illegal organizations called syndicates, such as the Mafia and the Cosa Nostra. Organized crime originated with the adoption in the USA in 1920 of Prohibition, or the “dry law,” which made the sale of alcoholic beverages a criminal offense. Prohibition resulted in “bootlegging”—underground, black market trade in alcohol at inflated prices. The colossal profits were a stimulus for the formation of gangs of bootleggers, the competition among which developed into bloody battles. By the time Prohibition was repealed in the early 1930’s, criminal organizations had already taken shape as a variety of business in most states.

Organized crime in its present form involves a considerable number of people (about 5,000 in the USA) and is characterized by specialization of function and ties between states on a nationwide scale. The structure of organized crime follows the principle of vertical subordination. There are shippers, producers, wholesalers, and retailers; members of different levels of the syndicate often do not know one another. The group that receives the profits and exercises authority is separate from the group that engages directly in action. The upper leadership of the syndicate concerns itself chiefly with putting together criminal conspiracies and aiding and abetting crime. Membership in a syndicate usually involves participation in more than one type of criminal activity. Groups of professional killers who eliminate “objectionable” persons play an important role in the syndicates.

Organized crime encompasses the “rackets,” or extortion under threat of reprisal, and also the supplying of illegal goods and the offering of prohibited services. Examples are gambling, loan-sharking, the sale of narcotics, the distribution of pornography, and the maintenance of hideouts. Organized crime has also penetrated “legal” spheres of business and the corrupt, or “yellow,” labor unions. To ensure their security the agents of organized crime suborn and corrupt the state administrative machinery. Organized crime constitutes graphic evidence of the crisis of the capitalist state and society and of the corruption of the bourgeois state machinery.

A. M. IAKOVLEV

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