Organized crime and riot
Organized crime, complex of highly centralized enterprises set up for the purpose of engaging in illegal
activities. Such organizations engage in offenses such as cargo theft, fraud, robbery, kidnapping for
ransom, and the demanding of “protection” payments. The principal source of income for these criminal
syndicates is the supply of goods and services that are illegal but for which there is continued public
demand, such as drugs, prostitution, loan-sharking (i.e., usury), and gambling.
Although Europe and Asia have historically had their international rings of smugglers, jewel thieves, and
drug traffickers, and Sicily (see Mafia) and Japan (see yakuza) have centuries-old criminal organizations,
organized criminal activities particularly flourished in the 20th century in the United States, where at
times organized crime was compared to a cartel of legitimate business firms.
Quiz
Quiz: Al Capone, Public Enemy Number One
The tremendous growth in crime in the United States during Prohibition (1920–33) led to the formation
of a national organization. After repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment put an end to bootlegging—the
practice of illegally manufacturing, selling, or transporting liquor—criminal overlords turned to other
activities and became even more highly organized. The usual setup was a hierarchical one, with different
“families,” or syndicates, in charge of operations in many of the major cities. At the head of each family
was a boss who had the power of life and death over its members.
Wherever organized crime existed, it sought protection from interference by the police and the courts.
Accordingly, large sums of money have been expended by syndicate bosses in an attempt to gain
political influence on both local and national levels of government. Furthermore, profits from various
illegal enterprises have been invested in legitimate businesses.
In addition to the illegal activities—principally gambling and narcotics trafficking—that have been the
syndicates’ chief source of income, they may also engage in nominally legitimate enterprises, such as
loan companies (in underworld parlance, “the juice racket”) that charge usurious rates of interest and
collect from delinquent debtors through threats and violence. They may also engage in labour
racketeering, in which control is gained over a union’s leadership so that the union’s dues and other
financial resources can be used for illegal enterprises. Real-estate firms, dry-cleaning establishments,
waste-disposal firms, and vending-machine operations—all legally constituted businesses—when
operated by the syndicate may include in their activities the elimination of competition through
coercion, intimidation, and murder. The hijacking of trucks carrying valuable, easily disposable
merchandise has been another favoured activity of organized crime.
The ability of organized crime to flourish in the United States has traditionally rested upon several
factors. One factor has been the threats, intimidation, and bodily violence (including murder) that a
syndicate brings to bear to prevent victims or witnesses (including its own members) from informing on
or testifying against its activities. Jury tampering and the bribing of judges have been other tactics used
to prevent successful government prosecutions. Bribery and payoffs, sometimes on a systematic and far-
reaching scale, are useful tools for ensuring that municipal police forces tolerate organized crime’s
activities.
The fact that many Americans believe that most of the rackets and other types of illegal gambling (which
provide the economic base for some of the uglier forms of organized crime) are not innately immoral or
socially destructive—and therefore deserve a certain grudging tolerance on the part of law-enforcement
agencies—has contributed to the prosperity of syndicate operations. Criminal organizations in the
United States are best viewed as shifting coalitions, normally local or regional in scope.
Criminal syndicates have also prospered outside the United States. For example, in Australia extensive
narcotics, cargo theft, and labour racketeering rings have been discovered; in Japan there are gangs
specializing in vice and extortion; in Asia organized groups, such as the Chinese Triads, engage in drug
trafficking; and in Britain there are syndicates engaging in cargo theft at airports, vice, protection, and
pornography. There also are many relatively short-term groups drawn together for specific projects,
such as fraud and armed robbery, from a pool of long-term professional criminals.
Apart from the drug trade, the principal form of organized crime in many developing countries is the
black market, which involves criminal acts such as smuggling and corruption in the granting of licenses
to import goods and to export foreign exchange. Armed robbery has been particularly common because
of the widespread availability of arms supplied to nationalist movements by those seeking political
destabilization of their own or other countries. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991,
organized-crime rings flourished in Russia. By the beginning of the 21st century, official Russian crime
statistics had identified more than 5,000 organized-crime groups responsible for international money
laundering, tax evasion, and the murders of businessmen, journalists, and politicians. One report even
argued that Russia was on the “verge of becoming a criminal syndicalist state, dominated by a lethal mix
of gangsters, corrupt officials, and dubious businessmen.”
Riot
Riot, in criminal law, a violent offense against public order involving three or more people. Like an
unlawful assembly, a riot involves a gathering of persons for an illegal purpose. In contrast to an
unlawful assembly, however, a riot involves violence. The concept is obviously broad and embraces a
wide range of group conduct, from a bloody clash between picketers and strikebreakers to the
behaviour of a street-corner gang.
In Anglo-American legal systems, the offense of riot lies mainly in a breach of the peace. Under
continental European codes, the offense requires interference with or resistance to public authority. In
the United States, the United Kingdom, and India, riot is usually a misdemeanour punishable by light
sentences. However, laws in the United Kingdom provide for harsher penalties when rioters refuse to
disperse after they have been ordered to do so by a magistrate. In the United States, Canada, and India,
the penalty is increased for a riot against public authority, though it is not as harsh as that of the United
Kingdom, and the violation of public authority through riot does not require the formal presence of a
magistrate.
How Does the U.S. Government Define the Difference Between a Protest and a Riot?
In Germany riot is limited to an offense against public authority, and lesser acts of group violence are
termed breaches of the public peace. For a disturbance to constitute a riot, an official engaged in the
exercise of his duties must be resisted, assaulted, or threatened. The penalty for both riot and breach of
the peace is greater under German law if the accused person performed one of the overt acts or was a
ringleader, a distinction also observed in Japan. French law does not define riot separately but treats it
as a special case of resistance to public authority under the general heading of rebellion. Breach of the
peace, which is central to the Anglo-American concept of riot, is not treated as an offense in French law.
Two types of cases are processed by a juvenile court: civil matters, usually concerning care of an
abandoned child or one whose parents cannot support him; and criminal matters arising from antisocial
behaviour by the child. Most statutes provide that all persons under a given age (18 years in many
places) must be processed initially by the juvenile court, which can then, at its discretion, assign the case
to an ordinary court.
The idea behind the juvenile court system is that children should be treated with special care. Its
originators considered it futile and unjust to punish a child for wrongdoing, preferring rehabilitation
instead. To accomplish this, the court operates informally and paternally. The first juvenile court was
established in 1899 in Chicago, and the movement spread rapidly throughout the world. Juvenile courts
are now found in Europe, Latin America, Israel, Iraq, Japan, and other countries, although there is
variation in structure and procedures.
There has been much disagreement, especially in the United States, over whether the juvenile court’s
informality helps or hurts children. Some argue that, with crowded court calendars and incompetent
judges, the court’s purpose is thwarted and that the child is stripped of the rights of criminal defendants
with no corresponding relaxation in severity of treatment. In response to this, courts in the United
States have extended to juveniles such rights as the right to cross-examine witnesses, the right to fair
notice of hearings, the privilege against self-incrimination, and the right to legal counsel.
