Organized Crime: Criminal Organizations, Terrorist Groups, and Militias - Essay Sample

Intriduction

Organized crime is a category in national, transnational, or local groupings involving an enterprise that is highly centralized and is run by criminals to go ahead with their illegal activities most commonly with the aim of profits. Criminal organizations, for example, terrorist groups are motivated politically. People are forced to do with criminal organizations sometimes, for instance, when gang members extort money from small business people (Desroches, 2007). Other organizations like military, corporations, churches, and police forces may sometimes use organized crime methods to conduct their normal activities. Still, they derive their powers from their formal social institutions' status. This is an activity to differentiate between organized crime from other crime forms such as state crimes, white-collar crime, financial crimes, a war crime, and treason.

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History of Organized Crime

Origin of the Organized crime in America is located back in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the urban centers. Urban centers were involved mainly in the flourishing of organized crime. The large population size provided the critical mass of customers, offenders, and victims. The early criminal organization forms were tied typically to local areas and had critical dimensions because of the segregated character of the city. For example, Irish neighborhoods gave birth to the Bowery Boys and the "O cannel's Guards," which are street gangs. In African American, Jewish, Chinese and Italian neighborhoods, criminal organizations reflected economic and cultural circumstances (Jacobs, Friel & Raddick, 2001). During the twentieth century's first decades, little Italies residents of several industrialized areas had to concur with a racket protection form known as "the black hand" or "la Mano Nera." These members demanded payments from those who are financially stable in the community. If not, they received warnings that their businesses could be bombed or their family members' safety jeopardized. A crude drawing of a black hand was used to sign the extortion demand. Those that were receiving the letter believed that the gang was a mighty and large organization. At the same time, it was likely a working individual who used the fear of their victims on the secret organization to implement payments.

Organized crime was highly incorporated in the American culture in 1950. There was an introduction of congressional hearings that were televised and chaired by senator Kefauver Estes to seek the supposed organized crime network members and also the law enforcement experts' testimony. The senator's report concluded that the organization was substantially controlling political corruption, gambling, labor racketeering, and narcotics in America and was under a conspiracy known as "the mafia." Senator Kefauver's findings significantly influenced how journalists, academics, policymakers and general public members would think concerning the organized crime problem for many years to come. However, critics argued that the committee had more engagement in the public drama process than searching for the truth.

By the 1980s, the widespread corruption systems had evolved from prohibition involved in well-planned relationships between established political machines and organized crime groups. A concern in the 1990s and 1980s, including the newly organized group's emergence, was followed by concerns on the increase of organized crime transnational character. The trend of the crime has been identified as a result of post-cold war economic and reconfiguration boundaries (Korsell &Larsson, 2011).

Terrorism in America

Terrorism can be characterized as the threatened or systematic use of extreme violence to create a fear environment to intimidate a government or a population and cause ideological, religious, or political change (Garrison, 2004).

History of Terrorism

It is disputed whether terrorism originated back in the 1st century to the 11th century to the 19th century and the other eras. Terrorism was being practiced in the United States a long time ago. Conspiratory groups used to practice terrorism but with indiscriminate violence. After the end of the American civil war, the Ku Klux Klan era emerged. This era contained a campaign that was against black empowerment and emancipation in the south. White supremacists burned, killed, and maimed African Americans usually done at night or in front of people sometimes (Garrison, 2004).

Long before World War 1 outbreak in 1914, there was already the manifestation of terrorism. For example, many Serbian government officials were involved in training, supporting, and arming various Balkan gangs, which had involvement in the assassination of Franz Ferdinand on June 28.

In the 1930s, political assassinations were witnessed. This contributed to the League of Nations proposing measures to punish and prevent terrorism and the establishment of the international criminal court. Terrorism referred to the imposed oppressive measures imposed by regimes such as Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and fascist Italy during the interwar years. According to a report in 2017 by the United States government, violent right-wing groups were involved in 73 percent of the 85 terrorism incidents that led to death since 2001.

September 11 attacks were a series of hijackings of airline and suicide attacks on September 11 of 2001 by al Qaeda terrorist group associated militants against the United States targets. This attack is considered as the most deadly in the U.S history. On September 11, 2001, the attackers boarded several domestic airlines at three different airports, and after takeoff, the crews were disabled. The attackers were now in full control of the aircraft. All the aircraft were large and had enough fuel loads. At around 8.46 AM, the first aircraft, an American airline flight 11, which had taken off from Boston, was directed to crash into the World Trade Center tower in the city of New York. Several observers initially contemplated this to be a minor commuter plane accident. United Airlines flight 175, which was the second plane and was also taken off from Boston, hit the south tower 17 minutes after the first crash. It was now clear that the country was under attack at this point. The impact had severely damaged the structures, and they were now erupting in flames. In some cases, workers in the office who were trapped leaped to their deaths rather than facing the fires that were now having a massive impact on the towers. Within the next hour, United Airlines flight 93 and the fourth aircraft crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside near shanks Ville after information from the passengers using the cellular phone after attempting to overpower the terrorists (Garrison, 2004).

The north tower fell 29 minutes later after the south tower collapsed after massive damage. Few adjacent buildings to the twin towers also experienced severe damage, which led to some falling. Fires had an impact for more than three months at the world trade center site. Almost 3000 people lost their lives. Also included in the total were 19 terrorists, while 4oo firefighters and police lost their lives trying to rescue the victims (Jones, 2006).

Transactional Organized Crime

Transactional Organized crime involves organized coordinated crime across borders of nations, involving market groups or individual markets that work in several countries to execute and plan illegal business activities. The involved groups use systematic corruption and violence to achieve their goals. Common known organized crimes are conveying arms, poaching, toxic water disposal, conveying drugs, materials theft and sex trafficking .

History of Transactional Organized Crime

Before World war 1, several organizations emerged to formalize the cooperation of international police. However, a lot failed because police institutions had insufficient detachment from their respective states' political centers to function as expert bureaus. The first congress involving lawyers, police officers, and magistrates took place in Monaco in 1914. They met to discuss extradition proceedings, centralized international criminal records, identification techniques, and arrest procedures. The organization was focused on avoiding political interferences that contributed significantly to the collapse of the earlier organization. However, when World War 1 broke out, the congress was disorganized. A second international crime police congress was conducted in Vienna in 1923. They were focused on avoiding the political involvement that ended previous organizations. Police officials from founding members included Germany, Belgium, France, Egypt, Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece, Poland, Russia, and Switzerland. Belgium led to the organization rebuilding after World War 2. The organization's viewpoint has changed in three ways after the introduction of war on drugs. Criminal network structure has changed, diversification of drug trafficking has become more, and new methods of conducting illegal business by criminal networks have emerged. After the organized crime has gone global, it has paved the way for organized crime term

Transactional organized crime has many effects. It is known to disrupt free markets, inhibit stable society's development, drain national assets, and undermine democracy. There has been an introduction of approaches by law enforcement agencies to fight this crime. The FBI uses various laws, investigative techniques, and asset forfeiture statutes to control these illegal activities. The investigations by the FBI mostly focus on major regional, national and international groups that are involved mainly in unlawful activities (Morsell, Gabor & Kledrowski, 2012)

What the FBI Investigate

The FBI is more focused on combating terrorism, which is the organization's top investigative priority. The FBI uses its investigative suite and intelligence capabilities by closely contacting various trusted partners to neutralize terrorist operatives and cells in the country. They fight terrorism by cutting off financing or other support forms to foreign terrorist groups. The organization is also involved in counterintelligence by understanding, identifying, and combating posed threats by other foreign intelligence programs. The FBI investigates cyber-attacks by terrorists, overseas adversaries, and criminals. Sensitive data, universities' cutting edge development, and research are targeted by criminal groups; hence FBI has to be equipped in combating these crimes. Moreover, public corruption poses a significant threat to the way of life and national security. That is why it remains the organization; top investigative priority. Also, civil rights are the responsibility of the Fbi. They focus on investigating allegations involving civil rights violations. Other crimes that FBI investigates include organized crime, white-collar crime, violent crime, and WMD. The bureau is involved in investigating and collecting intelligence on weapons and mass destruction related incidents and threats to prevent similar attacks and respond appropriately to them on their occurrence (Whitehead, 1959).

References

Desroches, F. (2007). Research on upper level drug trafficking: A review. Journal of Drug Issues, 37(4), 827-844.

Garrison, A. H. (2004). Defining terrorism: Philosophy of the bomb, propaganda by deed and change through fear and violence. Criminal Justice Studies, ...