Organized crime: structure, operations, and impact

Organized Crime Groups Throughout the World

Organized crime groups all over the world have several similarities, regardless of which country they operate out of or the ethnicity of its members. As a result, there are number of characteristics of organized crime groups that are consistent whether the group is based in the United States, Japan, China, Russia and Mexico. There are some differences in the groups but these differences are mainly a reflection of the political environments in which the groups rose to power and the geographic peculiarities of each situation. This paper addresses the similarities and differences of both.

The chief similarity is the illicit activities engaged in. All five of the groups have some involvement in the drug trade, money laundering, computer-based consumer fraud and human trafficking. The only real variant is the degree to which these occur and are known to exist. The major Japanese crime group, the Yakuza, is a destination for a major thousands of women who are trafficked from China and Latin America through Mexico. Russian mobsters operate a large ring of trafficked Russian women in the United States. eastern Europe.

Russia, China and Mexico, like the United States, are major drug transport countries, where organized crime operatives move narcotics to national and international markets, as well as major domestic markets as drug use skyrockets among the local youths. In all the countries the rise in the domestic consumption leads to surge of involvement by organized crime syndicates (Shelly 2006).

Another similarity is the organized structure in which the operations are ran. The term "organized crime" is used precisely as it does not indicate merely a large group of professional criminal. Organized crime groups in all the countries use a strict hierarchy of rank and promotion. Also, there is a code of conduct and a disciplinary code for those who do not follow the rules.

A significant difference within the countries and their crime groups focus on the state of the nation's central government at the time the group was formed. The modern Russian mafia seized upon the fall of the Soviet bloc and resulting capitalism to instantly engage in all of the black market activities. The American mafia, by contrast, arose not from political chaos, but from a single black market commodity: prohibition-era alcohol.

Another key difference is the public role occupied by organized crime. While the U.S. may glamorize its organized crime groups via its pop-culture, law enforcement is still the official and unofficial policy of the nation. In Mexico, however, the organized crime groups wield much more actual power and operate in many ways with impunity. In Russia, as in Mexico, the groups are known to have the cooperation of the government. In the Unites States, individual politicians and law enforcement officers are susceptible to bribery and cavorting with the crime groups, but the crime groups in the United States are never known to be operating under the cover of the government.