Organized crimes are no ideological enterprises that involves a number of people who might be closely related, have common social practices and interactions and they are established with the purpose of securing profits or power through engaging in almost any kind of illegal activities (Abadinsky 2010). These organizations can also be described as a collection of criminals working together in the same criminal business working towards a common goal. An example of such an organization is the La Cosa Nostra (LCN) which has been operating in the United States for a long time since 1920s. This organization is also known as the Mafia, or the Mob. The LCN over a very long time have become the most prominent criminal organization in the U. S. Their strength is the fact that they possessed great monopoly control over several other criminal markets. There strategy is to use or threaten violence in order to gain and maintain control.
The organization is involved in ruthless violence activities. This ruthless violence is usually conducted in form of beatings and killings or just the threat of violence. They commonly used this tactics to gain monopoly and control over other criminal enterprises. Besides carrying out violence activities, they also threaten and discourage their competitors in a way to eliminate their participation and also to regain and reinforce its reputation. In 1997, the organization was alleged to have plotted an assignation against a federal judge who is said to have presided over a couple of big mob trials in New York City. According to Lauryn (1999), the organization is linked in a number of crimes that are their specialty and unique to this organization only which includes business racketing, industry cartels bid-rigging and other business frauds. La Cosa Nostra illegal activities are beyond violence activities they are also involved in gambling and drugs which they have always counted as their biggest money makers including hijacking, air cargo theft and murder.
The other criminal organization is Crips. This is an African American organization that was started in Los Angeles California and has grown to have several networks around the United States. It is considered as one of the most violent street gangs in the states. They have an estimated number of about 35000 members across the states of California, Texas Oklahoma and Missouri. The members of this organization are mostly young African American men with a few members being white. They are associated with criminal activities such as drug trade. They assert their profits from conducting illegal drug trading. They are responsible of producing and conducting the distribution of the PCP drug in the city of Los Angeles. They also carried out trades and distributed cocaine and marijuana across the city. Other criminal activities involved with this gang are murders robberies which they carried out in pursuit of making profits and ensuring that the primary activities of the group continued (Colton, 2005).
In comparison to other criminal organizations, La Cosa Nostra was involved in many illegal activities including corrupting law enforcements and other political systems something their competitors were not able to do. According to Colton 2005), “no other criminal organization in the United States has controlled labor unions, organized employer cartels, operated as a rationalizing force in major industries and functioned as a bridge between the upper world and the underworld”. Hence, the capacity of the organization to conduct and get involved in such activities made the organization become distinguished from any other criminal organization in the U. S.
References
Abadinsky, H. (2010). Organized crime 9th ed. Florence, KY: Thomas Wadsworth Publishing.
Colton S. (2005). Inside the Crips: Life Inside L.A.’s Most Notorious Gang. Gordonsville: Virginia St. Martin’s Press.
Lauryn, P. G. (1999). Cosa Notstra: the final chapter? Crime and justice. Chicago : The University of Chicago.