Organized Crime Legislations

The government also sometimes plays a more obvious role (to the public) that impacts organized crime groups and their activities. One way is when the government implements legislations that would affect organized crime groups and what they are able to do. Sometimes the government does indeed look like they want to end organized crime, but when attempts are made sometimes the result is not the greatest. “Terror tactics were thus used by the Mafia to ‘subvert anti-Mafia actions and legislative moves, these bombings were meant to openly challenge the political elite and send a message to the ‘powers-that-be’” (Makarenko, pg. 134). Maybe there are other reasons for the government getting involved with organized crime, for reasons other than profit?

Derouches mentions in the article that these legislations often lead to big cases and trials (page number). This is problematic as trial delays also occur in criminal organization proceedings that can result in a case being dismissed on constitutional grounds. Essentially, this means that charges can be dismissed. For example, Hells Angels in 2011 were dismissed a couple of times because of this legislation. Charges dismissed were murder, drug trafficking and participating in an organized crime group. This is very beneficial to organized crime groups as they get no charges pressed against them and they can go back to business. All of these reasons are why I believe the government is behind organized crime groups. The truth is like Hobbs article explains, so many powerful figures and industries have benefitted from organized crime. “The fortunes of the Astors (corruption, extortion, violence, fraud), the Vanderbilts (political insurrection, violence), the Rockefellers (corruption, violence), Henry Ford (violence) and other seminal figures of America (Hobbs, pg.31). And this is the exact reason that organized crime is still so strong and persists

Media is a huge part of all of our lives and like many people, before this course, I got a lot of my information about organized crime groups on the news. “…the gangster film was a staple of silent era Hollywood (Hobbs, pg. 30). Just like today, the movie industry played a large part in how gangsters/mafia was seen, movies showed the public what organized crime groups did as well as what sort of people were usually associated with them. As we have learned in class, and as portrayed by media, certain ethnic groups were more active in organized groups than others. “Alien conspiracy theory, the insistence that organised crime is ‘imported’ and that foreigners are responsible for organised crime, has proved an effective tool of exclusion that has been applied to subsequent generations of diasporas” (Hobbs ,pg. 28) As Hobbs points out, mainly immigrants were blamed for the emergence of organized crime. A factor that has been mentioned in class and in articles is the question of why does this generally involve immigrants? Many scholars believe that it for socio-economic reasons, “Bell, for example, saw ‘organised crime’ as the ultimate attempt by the migrants in the United States to pursue the American Dream” (Hobbs pg. 27). And although this is the case, I think there is more to this than what the media depicts. “The Daily Mail