Personal Perceptions and Definitions of Organized Crime

Introduction to Organized Crime

Organized crime is, in reality, a complex mix of largely clandestine social phenomena that are also highly diverse. It is therefore not possible to define organized crime as a single, identifiable entity. It takes both linguistic effort and cognitive input to enable us to view these phenomena as connected. Consequently, it is better to approach the organized crime problem not as an exclusively empirical issue. Examining the historical aspects of organized crime is likely to provide insights into its depth and extent. It will also demystify the phrase "organized crime" and offer insight into the political and social factors that inform and shape views on the subject (Von Lampe, 2011).

Assumptions About Organized Crime

The practice of organized crime is driven by a number of assumptions. First, it is believed that awareness and responsibility levels will be reduced significantly compared to situations where a clear target can be easily discerned. The offender in such a setup is motivated and assumed to be a reasoning individual who, in pursuit of daily criminal activities, can observe and analyze situations and make decisions based on the insights derived from that analysis.

There is a common assumption that the presence of other people somehow prevents the execution of a crime. However, this assumption does not hold in situations where an organized crime group has control over a defined geographical location. In such scenarios, supervision mechanisms work against those who oppose the group's criminal activities (Von Lampe, 2011).

Defining Organized Crime

The activities and members of a group can be used to define organized crime. While organized crime may take many forms of execution, the defining principle is the presence of some form of organization. According to Max Weber, an organization is a group of people with a common cooperative mission to achieve shared goals and objectives. He examined and identified several elements that constitute an organization and, by extension, the effective functioning of a bureaucracy — even within organized crime groups:

• A command unit: someone to whom another person is responsible.
• Definition principle: clearly defined responsibility and authority.
• Control scope: a limited number of individuals supervised by one person.
• Main objective: a defined goal and purpose for the organization's existence, such as drug trafficking, murder-for-hire, extortion, or gambling.
• A pyramid structure: orders flow down the pyramid from the top echelon; the top leadership decides.
• Specialization: each member has a defined specialty within the organized crime group.
• Rules: there is a defined process for joining the group and strict rules about never cooperating with police — known as omerta (Mallory, 2007).

Just as with legitimate organizations, no two organized crime groups are identical. There is considerable diversity among them. Criminal organizations also require management and supervision to achieve their profit-driven goals. Personnel management is equally critical. Criminal organizations are bureaucratic and often have autocratic leaders who punish failure and reward success. Members of organized crime also have an inherent need for recognition, self-esteem, and power (Mallory, 2007).

References

Felix, O. (2010). Organized crime — characteristics of organized crime. Law.jrank.org.

Mallory, S. L. (2007). Understanding organized crime. Jones and Bartlett.

Von Lampe, K. (2011). The application of the framework of situational crime prevention to 'organized crime.' Criminology and Criminal Justice, 11(2), 145–163.