Organized Crime in America. Specifically

¶ … organized crime in America. Specifically it will compare and contrast an Italian and an Asian organized crime group active in America. The Genovese Crime Family and the Chinese Big Circle Gang are two notorious organized crime groups that both call America home. Both of them are well-known to law enforcement officers and many members of the public, and both are extremely active in American organized crime. These groups are similar in many ways, from their operations to their involvement in illegal activities, such as drug trafficking. However, they are different enough that they could never combine to create a unified crime organization. They have different goals and outlooks, and they are organized completely differently. They could never work together, but Chinese gangs may be the organized crime of the future, while Italian families are in decline and may represent the past of organized crime.

The Genovese Crime Family

The Genovese crime family is one of the most noted Italian crime families in America, largely because one of their members, Joseph Valachi, testified before Congress in 1967, giving the American public an idea of gangland activities (Chin, et. al, 1994, p. 3). The Genovese family origins are in Sicily, and family members (from the Morretto and Saietta families), immigrated to New York in the 1890s, where they began criminal activities. Their early activities consisted of gambling, extortion, and robbery. The gang went through several different leaders throughout the 20th century, until Vito Genovese took it over in 1957, and led the group until he died in 1969. During Genovese's leadership, the family branched into illegal drug activity. Since 1969, the family has had numerous leaders, and has lost much of its power and prestige, and its main activities appear to be loansharking and illegal drug trafficking at the present.

While most Asian gangs are not based on strict leadership and hierarchy, most Italian crime families are extremely regimented, with several levels of leadership that must be acknowledged and adhered to. Another author notes, "[T]he 'soldiers' of the Genovese family were divided into fourteen regimes (corresponding to the Sicilian decine), each of which was headed by a caporegime, who referred to either the consigliere [counselor] or the sottocapo [underboss] (Paoli, 2003, p. 7). In addition, indoctrination and oath are extremely important as an entrance into the family (Paoli, 2005, p. 234), while the Chinese groups are less regimented and rely on local and national leadership - often they do not even know who their leaders are, because they are located in foreign countries or other locations (Chin, et. al, 1994, p. 222).

Probably the biggest difference between the Asian and Italian gangs is the power associated with leadership and the posturing that goes along with gaining leadership. The Genovese family has had literally dozens of leaders, many of whom lost their position due to assassination by other members who wanted to lead the group. Large organizations seem to promote this kind of activity, while there is little of it in Asian gangs. They are much smaller, and the leader is often not even known, and so, they tend to be less volatile and more cohesive in nature, which may be one reason they seem to be more successful than their Italian counterparts. The Italians are always fighting amongst themselves, which weakens the organization and its activities, while the Asians simply get down to business and complete it effectively.

In a final twist, there are at least some indications the Genovese family has allied itself with the Russian Mafia in some dealings, such as fuel distribution and retail sales along the East Coast of the U.S. (Chin, et. al, 1994, p. 260). Chinese gangs rarely team up with other organized crime groups, and if they do, it is with other Asian crime organizations, rather than those of other countries. The future of the Italian gangs like Genovese may lie in alliances such as these, since many of these families have lost much of their power and control over many illegal activities. The Asian gangs are becoming dominant in many areas of illegal activities, including drug and human trafficking.

The Big Circle Gang

The Big Circle Gang has rapidly become one of the most notorious and successful Chinese gangs in the world. The origins of the group go back to China's Red Guard, and the group has units-based throughout the world, including the U.S. And Canada. The Red Guards carried out Mao Zedong's harassment of China's middle class during his rule in China. After his death in 1976, the Red Guard was dissolved, "many Red Guards were sent to re-education prison camps around the city of Canton -- represented on maps by a big circle, hence the name -- where they were tortured and starved. Having been through this degradation and having military training, they have a fearsome reputation" (Hall, 2005). Many escaped China and relocated to Hong Kong, and then immigrated to the U.S. And Canada, where they formed their own gang units.

Like their Italian counterparts, the Big Circle deals primarily in drug trafficking, loansharking, and counterfeiting currencies and goods. They also deal in human smuggling and trafficking, and exporting stolen vehicles, which differs from most Italian operations, including the Genovese family. Unlike their Mafia cousins, the Big Circle is made up of very small units called "cells," in each location, and this makes it extremely difficult for law enforcement to find or infiltrate them (Hall, 2005). In contrast, the Genovese and other Mafia families are extremely large. Author Paoli continues, "The sheer size of the American mafia families has long prevented their members from interacting informally with each other, as is instead the case in most Sicilian mafia groups, and has favored internal stratification and segmentation" (Paoli, 2003, p. 7). Thus, most Asian gangs like the Big Circle are harder to control because they are smaller, less conspicuous, and less likely to accept new, unknown members.