Organized Crime in the 21st Century: Trends and Enforcement
This paper examines the evolving landscape of organized crime in the 21st century, focusing on the unique challenges it poses for law enforcement agencies in the United States and beyond. Drawing primarily on Congressional Research Service reports and scholarly sources, the paper explores key dimensions of organized criminal activity including money laundering, drug trafficking, and technology-facilitated fraud. It also addresses the increasing diversity and internationalization of criminal networks, the shift away from traditional hierarchical structures, and the growing role of cybercrime. The paper concludes by considering domestic legislative tools such as RICO and the prospects for international enforcement cooperation through bilateral agreements and United Nations frameworks.
- Introduction: Defining Organized Crime: Definition, scope, and domestic legal framework
- Money Laundering: Digital and traditional money concealment methods
- Drug Trafficking: Drug trade's role in organized crime revenue
- Organized Crime: A Study in Diversity: Ethnic diversity and varied criminal specializations
- Organized Crime and Technological Changes: Cybercrime, identity theft, and online fraud schemes
- International Enforcement: U.S. and UN cooperation against transnational crime
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper grounds its claims consistently in government and congressional research reports, lending authority to each section without over-relying on any single source.
- It moves logically from definitional groundwork through specific crime types to broader enforcement challenges, giving the argument a clear cumulative structure.
- Concrete examples — from fictional references like Breaking Bad to real prosecutions of Chinese crime networks in Kansas — make abstract concepts tangible without sensationalizing them.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of synthesis across multiple policy and academic sources to build a coherent argument. Rather than summarizing one report at a time, it weaves evidence from different sources within each thematic section to support unified claims — for instance, combining Bjelopera & Finklea's findings on digital money laundering with broader contextual analysis of why those methods are difficult to trace.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with an introductory section that defines organized crime, establishes its scope, and introduces RICO as the primary domestic legal tool. It then moves through four body sections organized thematically: money laundering methods, drug trafficking with a focus on Mexico, diversity of criminal organizations by ethnicity and crime type, and the role of technology in enabling new fraud schemes. The final section addresses international enforcement strategies, including U.S. bilateral agreements and United Nations conventions. This thematic structure allows each section to function as a self-contained analysis while contributing to an overarching argument about the growing complexity of combating organized crime.
Introduction: Defining Organized Crime
Organized crime presents unique challenges for law enforcement in the 21st century. As noted by Bjelopera and Finklea (2012) in their report to Congress on the history of organized criminal activity in the United States, modern organized criminal networks tend to be more fluid and less hierarchical than organized associations of the past. Organized crime networks are also more apt to outsource critical aspects of their operations, which can make building a unified case a challenge for law enforcement agencies (Bjelopera & Finklea, 2012, p. 1). Diverting resources to combat terrorism has also left law enforcement agencies in the United States with fewer financial resources to combat other forms of organized crime, although some methods used to trace both types of organizations — such as patterns of money laundering — are similar across both types of illicit associations.
Organized crime is defined as "criminal activity that, through violence or threatening people, seeks to extract illegal or legal rents from the community" (Calderon, 2015). Organized criminal organizations may include the Italian Mafia, Cosa Nostra, or any number of less well-known illegal groups. Unlike terrorist organizations, organized criminals are primarily driven by the need to make a profit, not by an ideology. They may have equally rigid systems as terrorist entities in allocating power and controlling the activities of members, as well as punishing those who deviate from group rules (Finklea, 2010, p. 3).
In general, organized crime involves criminal activities including but not limited to "prostitution, undocumented immigration, illegal substances, stolen goods, piracy, illegal gambling" — goods and services that the public is prohibited from obtaining by legal means and which are therefore provided illegally (Calderon, 2015). Organized crime may also involve selling stolen goods at a lower price or using extortion — for example, demanding that legitimate businesses pay for "protection." Organized crime poses a threat to the community through the threat of violence and by undermining legitimate businesses, reducing trust in and respect for the law if authorities cannot contain its spread. Additionally, as noted by Finklea (2010), there is an overall negative economic effect from organized criminal associations' illegal activities due to a loss of tax revenue that could be gained through legitimate purposes, such as when organized crime groups sell illegal goods or engage in identity theft.
In the United States, in recent years the most common method of policing organized crime has been leveraging the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) of 1970, which prohibits so-called racketeering activities (Finklea, 2010, p. 3). RICO has been used against a variety of groups and specifically prohibits activities involving illegal interstate or international conduct including "murder, kidnapping, gambling, arson, robbery, bribery, extortion, dealing in obscene matter, or dealing in a controlled substance or listed chemical" (RICO, 1970). But in the future, given the increasingly international nature of organized crime, looking beyond traditional domestic forms of enforcement may be required.
References
Bjelopera, J. & Finklea, K. (2012). Organized crime: An evolving challenge for U.S. law enforcement. CRS Report for Congress. Retrieved from: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41547.pdf
Bradley, T. (2015). Cybercrime is the modern-day mafia. Forbes. Retrieved from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/tonybradley/2015/10/16/cybercrime-is-the-modern-day-mafia/2/#b80e949bb71d
Calderon, F. (2015). Drug trafficking and organized crime: Connected but different. Harvard International Review, 36(4).
Finklea, K. (2010). Organized crime in America: Trends and issues for Congress. CRS Report for Congress. Retrieved from: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40525.pdf
Money laundering. (2016). Investopedia. Retrieved from: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/smurf.asp
RICO. (1970). Nolo. Retrieved from: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/content/rico-act.html
Organized crime. (2016). UN. Retrieved from: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/ar/organized-crime/index.html
Strategy to Combat Organized Crime. (2011). The White House. Retrieved from: https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/criminal-ocgs/legacy/2011/08/31/08-30-11-toc-strategy.pdf
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