Controlling Organized Crime: A Critique of Law Enforcement Policy

Abstract

Despite recent claims by federal law enforcement officials, efforts to reduce the level of organized crime have not met with success. This is the case because policy makers and the law enforcement community cling to a faulty model of organized crime in the United States: an alien conspiracy theory. It depicts organized crime as an underworld corporate enterprise comprised of ethnically or culturally distinct alien groups that corrupt fundamentally sound political and economic institutions. In fact, organized crime groups in America tend to be loosely structured enterprises, small, segmented, and highly responsive to illicit market forces. Organized criminals are not so much the corrupters of public officials and professionals as coequal partners involved in a symbiotic relationship. Finally, ethnicity is not a useful factor in understanding group membership, structure and operations. The derivative strategy of the alien conspiracy model is headhunting: seeking to disrupt organized crime by incarcerating gang leaders and members and seizing their assets. The headhunting strategy has produced a large number of arrests, convictions, and other forms of punishment against organized crime figures, but it has failed to reduce the level of organized crime activity. A more realistic and effective approach to law enforcement is suggested that concentrates on improving intelligence on organized crime by focusing on key components of illicit industries. Also, the law enforcement objective of limiting the scope of illicit trade must be replaced by the more realistic goal of limiting the concentration of power and wealth among illicit entrepreneurs. This new goal may be implemented by selectively targeting key upperworld institutions that, when corrupted, enable criminals to amass and use great wealth by using legitimate methods to disguise profits and cloak the exercise of illicit influence.