Organized Crime
Organized crime is a group of individuals, either local, national or international, that engage in criminal enterprises for profit. The rationale behind why they are formed varies because they may be politically motivated, financially motivated or an organized criminal 'gang.' We will look at the makeup of these organizations in this lesson.
There are three ways in which networks are formed within organized crime. The first is within a family, what we often refer to as a mafia. This form of organized crime operates based on the hierarchies of the related families, training of family members, and reliance on religion, tradition and culture.
The second way in which a network is formed is through a business. These organized crime groups are rigid, have a complex authority hierarchy and are impersonal. These tend to be particularly dangerous for the members due to the impersonal nature of the organizational members, the lack of familial or interpersonal loyalties to other members, and the importance of power relationships rather than protection of family members as in the prior network.
An example of a business that has incorporated organized crime would be to conduct illegal activities, such as insider trading, racketeering or drug trafficking. These legal corporations incorporate illegal organized crime methods in order to help them succeed and earn more money. An infamous example would be Bernard Madoff and his corporate associates who orchestrated a $65 billion Ponzi scheme, which was considered one of the biggest frauds in U.S. history, taking the life savings of over 1,000 investors.
The third way in which a network is formed is through a 'gang.' These members are often recruited through members' involvement in crime as youths and the connections made in the correctional facilities. Members often join a gang for protection or the need to belong, typically due to their lack of a support system in their homes. Some gangs have a loose hierarchy, especially when dealing with drugs, firearms or sex trafficking. Infamous criminal gangs around the United States include the Aryan Brotherhood, Latin Kings and Hells Angels.
Organizational criminals typically use extortion, which is the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats to get what they want. The organization also typically victimizes companies and individuals by stealing cars (to either trade or take apart and sell the parts), robbery, and fraud, counterfeiting money and rigging public projects. These criminal organizations use violence regularly as a way to obtain what they want. Bodily harm may come to victims that do not comply or to members themselves that do not take their roles seriously or complete their assigned task successfully.
So, who are the biggest organized crime gangs around the world and how do they make their money? Organized crime revenues are very difficult to estimate, as criminals often spend a significant amount of time trying to hide what they make. Also, “organized crime” is a loosely defined concept. Anything from a vast drug smuggling ring to a handful of car thieves can be classified as organized crime groups, and the cohesiveness of organized crime organizations around the world varies widely. Some groups, like Japan’s Yakuza, are highly organized and hierarchical, allowing economists and crime fighters in Japan to attribute much higher revenue totals to Yakuza groups than others around the world. Here are the top five criminal gangs, ranked by revenue estimates:
Solntsevskaya Bratva
Russian mafia groups sit on the other side of the organizational spectrum from Yakuza. Their structure, according to Frederico Varese, a professor of criminology at the University of Oxford and an expert on international organized crime, is highly decentralized. The group is composed of 10 separate quasi-autonomous “brigades” that operate more or less independently of each other. The group does pool its resources, however, and the money is overseen by a 12-person council that “meets regularly in different parts of the world, often disguising their meetings as festive occasions,” Varesi says.
It’s estimated that the group claims upwards of 9,000 members, and that its bread and butter is the drug trade and human trafficking. Russian organized crime in general is heavily involved in the heroin trade that originates in Afghanistan: it’s estimated that Russia consumes about 12% of the world’s heroin, while it contains just 0.5% of the world’s population.
Yamaguchi Gumi
The largest known gang in the world is called the Yamaguchi Gumi, one of several groups collectively referred to in Japan as “Yakuza,” a term that is roughly equivalent to the American use of “mafia.” The Yamaguchi Gumi make more money from drug trafficking than any other source, according to Hiromitsu Suganuma, Japan’s former national police chief. The next two leading sources of revenue are gambling and extortion, followed closely by “dispute resolution.”
The Yakuza date back hundreds of years, and according to Dennis McCarthy, author of An Economic History of Organized Crime, Yakuza groups are among the most centralized in the world. While other East Asian gangs like Chinese Triads, which are a loose conglomeration of criminals bonded together mostly by familial relations, Yakuza are bound together by “elaborate hierarchies,” and members, once initiated, must subvert all other allegiances in favor of the Yakuza. Even with the Japanese government cracking down on Yakuza in recent years, this centralized structure has made it easy to attribute a massive amount of revenue to this single gang.
Camorra
While the Italian-American mafia has been severely weakened in recent decades by law enforcement, the Italian mafia in the old country is still running strong. Despite years of efforts from citizens, journalists, and government officials, the local governments in Italy remain linked to and protective of various mafia groups, to the point where a 2013 study from the Università Cattolica and the Joint research Centre on Transnational Crime estimated that mafia activities generate revenue of $33 billion dollars, mostly divided among Italy’s four major mafia gangs.
Camorra is the most successful of these groups, raking in an estimated $4.9 billion per year on everything from “sexual exploitation, firearms trafficking, drugs, counterfeiting, gambling … usury and extortion,” according to the report. And Camorra has been at it a long time. Based in Naples, the group’s history dates back to the 19th century, when it was formed initially as a prison gang. As members were released, the group flourished during the bloody political struggles in Italy during the 1800s by offering protection services and as a force for political organization among Italy’s poor.
Ndrangheta
Based in the Calabria region of Italy, the ‘Ndarangheta is the country’s second largest mafia group by revenue. While it is involved in many of the same illicit activities as Camorra, ‘Ndrangheta has made its name for itself by building international ties with South American cocaine dealers, and it controls much of the transatlantic drug market that feeds Europe. It has also been expanding its operations in the U.S. and has helped prop up the Gambino and Bonnano crime families in New York. In February, Italian and American police forces arrested dozens of ‘Ndrangheta and Gambino family members and charged them with crimes related to the transatlantic drug trade.
Sinaloa Cartel
Sianola is Mexico’s largest drug cartel, one of several gangs that has been terrorizing the Mexican population as it serves as the middleman between South American producers of illegal drugs and an unquenchable American market. The White House Office of Drug Control Policy estimates that Americans spend $100 billion on illegal drugs each year, and the RAND Corporation says that about $6.5 billion of that reaches Mexican cartels. With an estimated 60% market share, Sinola cartel is raking in approximately $3 billion per year.
There are an estimated 140,000 victims of human trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation in Europe alone, generating a gross annual income of US$3 billion for their exploiters. "World-wide there are millions of modern slaves traded at a price not higher in real terms than centuries ago,”
The two most prominent flows for smuggling migrants are from Africa to Europe and from Latin America to the US. Around 2.5-3 million migrants are smuggled from Latin America to the United States every year, generating US$6.6 billion for smugglers.
Europe is the highest value regional heroin market (US$20 billion), while Russia is now the single largest national heroin consumer in the world (70 tons). "Narcotics kill 30,000-40,000 young Russians per year, twice the number of Red Army soldiers killed during the invasion of Afghanistan in the decade of the '80s,”
The North American cocaine market is shrinking, because of lower demand and greater law enforcement. This has generated a turf war among trafficking gangs, particularly in Mexico, and new drug routes. "Along the entire Atlantic coast of Latin America cocaine is trans-shipped into Europe via Africa".
The countries that grow most of the world's illicit drugs, like Afghanistan (opium) and Colombia (coca), receive the most attention and criticism. Yet, most drug profits are made in the destination (rich) countries. For example, out of a global market of perhaps US$55 billion for Afghan heroin, only about 5 per cent (US$2.3 billions) accrues to Afghan farmers, traders and insurgents. Of the US$72 billion cocaine market in North America and Europe, some 70 per cent of the profits are made by mid-level dealers in the consumer countries, not in the Andean region.
The global market for illicit fire-arms is estimated at US$170-320 million per year, which is 10-20 per cent of the licit market. Although the smuggling of arms tends to be episodic (i.e. related to specific conflicts), the amounts have been so large, to kill as many people as some pandemics.
The illegal exploitation of natural resources and the trafficking in wildlife from Africa and South-east Asia are disrupting fragile eco-systems and driving species to extinction. Estimates that illicit wood products imported from Asia to the EU and China were worth some US$2.5 billion in 2009.
The number of counterfeit goods detected at the European border has gone up by a factor of ten over the past decade, for a yearly value of more than US$10 billion. As much as half of medications tested in Africa and South East Asia are counterfeited and substandard, increasing, rather than reducing the chance of illness.
The number of piracy attacks off the Horn of Africa has doubled in the past year (from 111 in 2008 to 217 in 2009), and is still rising. Pirates from one of the world's poorest countries (Somalia) are holding to ransom ships from some of the richest, despite the patrolling by the world's most powerful navies. Of the more than US$100 million annual income generated by ransom, only a quarter goes to the pirates, the rest to organized crime.
More than 1.5 million people a year suffer the theft of their identity for an economic loss estimated at US$1billion, while cybercrime is endangering the security of nations: power grids, air trafficking and nuclear installations have been penetrated.
These are just a few examples of the wealth of new evidence included also makes a number of suggestions on how to deal with the threats posed by the globalization of crime.
"Disrupting the market forces" behind these illicit trades. "The breaking-up of criminal groups per se does not work, as those arrested are immediately replaced," He cautioned that "law enforcement against mafia groups will not stop illicit activities if the underlying markets remain unaddressed, including the army of white-collar criminals - lawyers, accountants, realtors and bankers - who cover them up and launder their proceeds. The greed of white collar professionals is driving black markets, as much as that of crime syndicates."
Organized Crime which was adopted in 2000. Crime has internationalized faster than law enforcement and world governance.
Difference between countries being unwilling rather than being unable to fight organized crime, appealing for more development and technical assistance to reduce vulnerability of poor nations. When states fail to deliver public services and security, criminals fill the vacuum
Criminals are motivated by profit: so let go after their money.