Organized Crime and Crime Families in North America

The topic of my law culminating exam is Organized Crime. Organized Crime is usually when criminals run enterprises and companies for profit but are engaging in illegal activities and other motives to make profit. There are many causes of organized crime, this usually happens when there is a failed economic crisis or high rate of unemployment. Organized crime usually involves the mob or crime families and mafia families like the Gambino Crime Family which is one of the most famous crime families in New York and is still around to this day.

Situations where there are high economic failures or employment crime families usually take advantage of these situations by supplying goods and jobs. To this day and back in the past the mob families had a lot of control over the whole city because they had police officers and chiefs on their payroll to get away with illegal activities. Also, these families use huge enterprises and companies as huge money laundering schemes were, they use their legal profits to wash their dirty money that was obtained illegally. The organized crime groups are controlled by many families of all ethnicities like Chinese, Jamaican, Haitian, Vietnamese and mainly Italian.

The crime families make their money predominantly from prostitution, robbery, fraud and mostly narcotics and loan sharking and extortion. A main branch of mobs was loan sharking which is when they lend money for high rates to people who couldn’t get one from a bank or the shark is making some of the conditions illegal. The main branch of organized crime is the crime families which originated in Sicily, Italy and the terms of these mafias are a lifelong loyalty and trust and to them this tie to their crime family is more important than their real family and any distrust or betrayal would usually end in this member dying or being severely punished.

Also, the families have high respect and authority to the senior members of these mafia families and represent the top of the hierarchy of the crime family. Also, normal members when trusted are initiated into the family and they hold a ceremony. All these families also have their own structured areas which is something gangs have picked up from the mafia. These Italian families came to North America as immigrants and made many ties and started to grow their criminal interests.

Organized crime has made a big wave earlier in the 70s-90s because crime was easier but in the modern day, they haven’t been popular. Organized crime mainly began in the 1910s when prohibition was illegal because the demand of alcohol was so high, and gangsters and mobsters found a way to make easy profit. One of the most notorious mobsters is Al Capone who surged to fame for this exact idea. Al Capone sold illegal alcohol and a multitude of crimes like violence, gambling and prostitution.

Crime Families like Al Capones and Luciano created organized crime by first started battles over area and speakeasies which are bars for illegal alcohol during the prohibition. This chapter of organized crime is very important because it essentially caused the start of a crime and drug era. Most gangs and mobs seek out corrupt individuals like politicians and people in high roles in term of the government like judges to make cases against them either disappear or rule in their favour. Therefore, organized crime is directly linked with criminal and civil law because of corrupt judicial officials like judges and law enforcement like cops and government officials. Organized crime also links to rights and freedoms because these crime organizations are causing high volumes of crime and violence which impeached many people’s freedoms causing them to either lose their lives or not be able to be free. The many crime families have had a big effect on the future and past because of how controlling their businesses are.

For example Al Capone was such a high level mob boss that even though he was involved in so many illegal activities the police and lawyer’s couldn’t even gain enough information to arrest him for what he had done and eventually they arrested him for tax evasion when he had done a lot worse. These crime organizations also affected a main subject to law which is history. The United States had a 18th Amendment which pertained that the sale and manufacturing of alcohol was illegal but even though this law was made the mobs essentially exploited the publics needs for their own. Also, crime organizations have also made criminal law turn into another level of security. An example of this is how people who turn against the mob are placed into witness protection because they fear that they will be harmed seriously for betraying their mob family they made a pact with.

A main part of criminal law is the Racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations act which is a law that was only passed due to the mob and a chance to stop its illegal growth in North America. Racketeering is when a service is offered repeatedly by a criminal that doesn’t solve anything and the mob mainly did this because all their activities and business were all fronts for their illegal business. Even though to this day many mobs still exist the crime families have gone down substantially since the 1970s-1990s. Therefore, organized crime has played a big role in the eyes of law pertaining to criminal law, civil law, history of law and most importantly the rights and freedoms of the public. Also, playing a big role in how the country has changed.