Russian Organized Crime
The last decade of the XX century was very hard for Russia. As the USSR split into separate republics, the country turned out to be in chaos. This situation was effectively used by criminals who possessed skills to cheat people and deal with administration executives by offering them bribes. In a short time, most of the country’s factories and other valuable pieces of industry were in the hands of Russian OC members. Nowadays, they make up the contemporary OC group in the country that works towards getting wealthier. Most of them possess political power.
The Vory had similar methods of influence. They controlled their enemies by fear and killed anyone who would stand in their way. However, they had a very strict code of conduct that did not let them act as they wished (Abadinsky 129). The Vory helped each other and never thrived to get as rich as possible. They opposed the government that, according to them, was guilty of putting them into such conditions.
African-American Organized Crime
Organized crime groups of African-Americans engage in the same activities as other OC structures in the world. For instance, their main focus is on drug trafficking, which is similar to the Mexican criminal activity. However, Mexicans control this market, and there is little space for Blacks to compete in this field. Moreover, they do not have as much power as Russians or Africans do. African-Americans usually do not expand their activities further than the area they control, which is usually small. Finally, the American police administration does not want to create a racial conflict by stressing that Blacks are in charge of the local OC.
Nigerian Organized Crime
Drug trafficking is one of the main activities of Nigerian OC groups. They share this feature with Mexican and African-American criminal organizations. One main difference between this OC group with others is that they do not form a mafia structure as it is done, for example, among Russian criminals. They unite based on their current needs and tasks (Allum and Gilmour 127). Their primary product is heroin since they cannot compete with Mexico over cocaine. While Nigerian OC members transfer some cocaine from South America to Europe and Africa, their heroin trade is accounted for almost 90 percent of the total world number. Nigerian criminal groups that operate in the United States do not usually work on the streets. They rather act as distributors that sell drugs through low-level street dealers.
Mexican Organized Crime
Mexico is known for its high corruption level and the wars between cartels that control the drug trafficking. The latter feature is similar to activities in Colombian cartels. Both structures deal with cocaine distribution mainly to the USA. Moreover, drug trafficking is their primary activity, if not exclusive. However, Mexico has an advantage since its border with the USA allows drug dealers to reach a wide market of consumers. Corruption is tolerated in Mexican society in general. It became possible since the country’s government was formed through bribing officials in return for political support (Edmonds-Poli and Shirk 56). Moreover, Mexico is not a wealthy country, which makes the government tolerate drug cartels since they bring much income to it. Besides, the country is very traditionalistic, and paternalism is a common model of relationships in many structures.
Works Cited
Abadinsky, Howard. Organized Crime. 11th ed., Cengage Learning, 2016.
Allum, Felia, and Stan Gilmour. Routledge Handbook of Transnational Organized Crime. Routledge, 2012.
Edmonds-Poli, Emily, and David A. Shirk. Contemporary Mexican Politics. 2nd ed., Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2012.