The Underside of Organized Crime

Wages of Crime by R.T. Naylor is a book covering the underside of society where Naylor tries to provide readers the various ways people commit crime. From prostitution to prohibition, Naylor includes the details of which characters come and commit illegal actions for the sake of financial gain and power. The book also includes other activities from recreational drugs and gambling and details supply-side controls act to increase profits as well as promote production. Best-case scenarios involve a few intermediaries removed from business.
But as Naylor notes, the black market always persisted thanks to consistent demand. In future instances a failure to thwart crime serves as a foundation for increasing police budgets, the expansion of law enforcement powers, and the great outpouring of money into the insatiable budget of the prison-industrial complex. This is simply just the introduction of the book, but allows the reader to under that Naylor is a specialist in the study of black markets, international financial crime, and smuggling. Wages of Crime takes the reader down the rabbit hole of a shadowy underworld filled with modern criminal businesses like gold smuggling, arms trafficking, terrorist financing, and money laundering. By dissecting the schemes by which illegal business owners and traders disguise their acts and enjoy their profits, Naylor aims to provide some context from which the reader can use to understand reality.
Naylor ultimately wants the misrepresentation and myth of international crime to dissipate and reveal the truth and he does this by revealing three assumptions. The first assumption is the very idea that great crime cartels are goose-stepping across the world stage. The second assumption is that something called "Globalization" and the accompanying spread of modern communications and transportation technology have been a godsend to international crime "cartels," which can use the technology to commit more and worse crimes while secreting the spoils (and themselves when necessary) in faraway places. And finally, the third assumption, the sums generated by international criminals are sufficient to threaten the very foundations of the world economic order.
The first assumption essentially means that great crime cartels are highly organized. They are so organized, that they even manage to have people working within the government to help them from being convicted of crimes. Some organized criminals are so deeply embedded into the political fabric of governments that they can control how government rules over the public. A good example of this is China’s Red Mafia. “‘Red Mafia’ is the collective term for corrupt public officials in mainland China, mainly from the criminal justice system, who attempt to monopolize the protection business in the criminal underworld by abusing power” (Wang, 2012, p. 49). Gangsters were able to develop relationships with public officials that granted them protection and increased enforcement in their cartels.
The second assumption, which falls into the third assumption is explained through the idea that globalization is providing the means for criminals to commit to a great scope of crime thanks to the increased reach, increased availability of resources, and the greater with which to travel and carry out their deeds. An article discussing the effects of globalization notes that in places like Africa, transnational crime is easier because of the sale of illegal commodities and trafficking of wildlife products that would have been impossible before (Nwebo & Ubah, 2015). With higher chances for soaring profits and a continually growing expanse of interconnected countries, criminals have the means and ability to trade with other criminals and corrupt entire governments, so they can gain the power and money the desire. Although none of it is proven yet, the United States under the Trump Administration, is heading towards an age where criminals and businesses will have more control over the people than the government will. This is just a piece of a much bigger puzzle that is organized crime and transnational crime.
References
Nwebo, O. E., & Ubah, C. (2015). Globalization of Crime: Problems and Challenges for World Peace and Security. International Journal of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 3(2), 92-102.
Wang, P. (2012). The rise of the Red Mafia in China: a case study of organised crime and corruption in Chongqing. Trends in Organized Crime, 16(1), 49-73. doi:10.1007/s12117-012-9179-8