What are the societal benefits of having “Organized” Crime (versus disorganized crime)?
I can think of a few things:
-under an Organized crime system, the Mafia (or whatever organization runs things), has a recognized head (or “Godfather”) who exerts control over the underlings. This is a benefit, because the underlings can be told to “back off”, when criminal activities become intolerable.
-the police can negotiate with the Godfathers, and allow territorial concessions in the various rackets (hookers, loansharking, illegal gambling, etc.)
young hoodlums who wish to follow a crime vocation can be trained by the existing crime organization
As opposed to DIS-organized crime:
-lots of random violence, innocent people get caught in the cross fires
-the police have no central authority to negotiate with
-in-fighting (“gang wars”)-resulting in lots of bloodshed, unsafe conditions
So, as long as society prohibits certain activities, is it better to have criminal activity under some kind of organization?
Organized crime historically runs things like protection rackets; they are parasitic on thier community, at best. They are also into burglaries, robberies, and high jackings. The street level punks don’t just magically disappear, either. What happens is that, even without being “made guys” they have to pay tribute from what they score. Your basic “smash n’ grab” junkies are still active also. The stuff they steal gets fenced to people who are part of (or at least tied to) organized crime.
I think the main issue is that organized crime will always lead to problems in the government and business world via bribes and threats. Over time, organized crime will seek to take over the rest of–well everything–since there’s no way to fight back against someone using illegal means except using illegal means yourself or, of course, cutting them off at the knees via policework.
Compare Russia, where the mafia has large control of significant portions of business and government, and I don’t think you’ll be terribly fond of the idea of them being allowed to expand as they will. If it gets big enough, eventually all of the graft and shoddy results that come out of a system which has been corrupted, feeds back to hurt everyone, including death, at a higher rate than is caused by some piddling crime in small areas of large cities.
Obviously if you could keep the organized crime groups very small–just big enough to handle a particular locality–that’s not too much of a worry. But I suspect that it’s rather difficult to cap things at a particular desired level.
Why should police negotiating with criminals to turn over portions of town to gangsters be considered a plus? Jesus freaking Christ, police shouldn’t have the authority to say that it is okay to sentence law-abiding people to live in a crappy part of town. Police negotiating with criminals to let them have their way is a HUGE minus in my book, because it means that the police are now more interested with making their job easier than they are about serving the people.
Why should police negotiating with criminals to turn over portions of town to gangsters be considered a plus?
Well, as I stated, there is a HUGE market in the USA for illegal sex. Since we don’t have licenced brothels, somebody has to address the demand. So, the police (in many cities) have acknowledged that they cannot eliminate the sex trade, so entrepreneurs will make it (sex) available, only the terms and conditions will not be acceptable to the consumers (dangerous, hazerdous circumstances). So, is it better that the trade be controlled in some way, or have it run by a lot of very violent small operators?
This is silly. Organized crime subverts government.
The best way to fight crime is through education, a good economy, job creation, fighting organized crime and legalizing most drugs and taxing them. Maybe do the same for crimes like prostitution and gambling of course, though that one seems well accomplished already.
Please show me one country that runs well and fair where organized crime coexists comfortably with the government.
The job of the police is to enforce the law, not make up which laws they care to enforce. We have elections to select leaders who will decide if a law is working or not. If drugs, sex, or violence is to be controlled rather than banned, politicians ought to make that decision.
Besides, isn’t it curious how the areas chosen to give up to criminals always seem to be the poor part of town? When’s the last time you walked though a wealthy neighborhood with an open-air drug market? Allowing police to decide which neighborhoods to give over to organized crime is NOT a positive.
While you’re at it, why don’t you provide some evidence that unorganized crime is more violent than organized crime?
Yes; in fact, it reminds me of the situation you see in some comic books. The superhuman takes over ( Superman with his powers, the Patrician Havelock Vetinari with his impossibly good plotting and manipulation ), and the results look good - but then someone points out that all you’ve done is create a system that needs a superhuman in charge to work. What happens to Ankh-Morpork when Vetrinari dies ? Sure, the system works well NOW ( well, it works well by the standards of Ankh-Morpork ), but what happens when someone who can’t keep all the factions and guilds and so on in balance takes over ?
Strange place for this debate to wander, but Lord Havelock Vetinari seems to be planning for his demise by encouraging the growth of civil services like the watch under Vimes/Carrot and possibly Moist von Lipwig as his replacement, who in the meantime has built a thriving postal system and taken the currency off of the Gold standard to a paper system. The next Lipwig book would appear to be about overhauling the tax system. It would appear he is also encourage the clean-up of the Unseen University into something that might work better.
Vetinari has also worked hard to bring peace through diplomacy to the area near Ankh-Morpork. In all he is a figure that could only exist in fantasy. A benevolent Dictator that is also thinking of the future and has plans for his successor and not of his line.
I guess Rome had a few early leaders like this, but other then George Washington, I cannot think of many others in history.
There is also the aspect of corruption, that inevitably leads from organized crime, that is inherently bad for society. Much worse (and harder to get rid of) that simple crime alone could ever be IMO.
I don’t know how true this is, but an Italian-American once told me the Mob once functioned as a sort of private police force in urban neighborhoods it controlled, in the sense that it would come down hard on anyone who committed a crime on that turf without the Don’s permission – which would not be given at all, to an outsider, for unprofitable crimes such as rape.
In a lot of interviews with older people in shows about New York or Vegas you often hear them imply that only the people who deserved it got taken care of by the Mob. I guess they’re not thinking of the shopkeepers who had to pay protection money. I don’t know where we began romanticizing the mob, I suppose in some ways Capone was always romanticized, but maybe it had something to do with that movie.
My dad grew up in New York in a neighborhood where the mob was just a part of day to day life, you didn’t talk about it, but it was always around. His father and some of his cousins associated with some low-level goons and union racketeers, but his grandfather was actually a friend of Meyer Lansky, who was the biggest Jewish mobster of his time. From the way they talk about it, it’s clear that they’re not bullshitting and that organized crime was just a local neighborhood thing that you accepted.
My dad had a few brawls and scrapes with petty crime as a kid, but according to him, he never felt afraid to walk around his neighborhood, nobody ever got shot, there was no “gang violence” of the sort that we associate with modern drug gangs, there weren’t metal detectors at school, and overall, he had a very safe and very happy childhood.
Take that for what it’s worth. Not trying to justify the mob, but it seems to me that organized crime is safer for the average guy on the street than “disorganized” crime.
However, as I understand it, if two (or more) groups or “families” in the Mafia (or however you choose to call your organized crime structure) start competing harshly enough, you may end up with a really nasty war for turf that can have rather unpleasant consequences for those unfortunate enough to be in the area, and ramifications that reach really far.
For example, there is a war going on between rival mafia groups in Mexico for control of drug distribution routes, combined with a crackdown on the pat of the government (and troubles involved in that crackdown). This has led to things like bombings in places that were quiet, and normal people being affected by violence… Things like heads of members of rival gangs being left propped up in very public areas of places like Acapulco, scaring off tourist trade.
And let us not forget the days of narco-terrorism in Colombia, when drug cartels were engaging in terrible terrorist attacks in order to directly destabilize the very structure of the Colombian government.
