White-collar and organized crimes: Questions of seriousness and policy

The line between organized crime and white-collar crime is often vague, compounding the separate social problems represented by these two types of criminality. This blurring is complicated further by the general assumption that organized criminals pose a more serious threat, thus requiring a stronger sanction than white-collar criminals. The controversy surrounding certain recent crime-control statutes centers around different assessments of the seriousness of both types of criminality. Prior studies of crime seriousness have focused primarily on crimes in general, with some attention to white-collar crime in contrast to ordinary crime. To date, however, no one has examined the differences in perceptions of seriousness between white-collar and organized crime. This paper investigates how occupation and attitudes toward the seriousness of white-collar and organized crime influence attitudes toward policy distinctions between the two, as well as toward the usefulness of various definitions of organized crime.     

Sicilian cultures of violence: The interconnections between organized crime and local society

The phenomenon of organized crime in Sicily has survived throughout all political changes and economic transformations that have taken place in Italy in the post war period. In search of an explanation, some scholars have blamed the absence of the State; some others have stressed the historically predatory relation between the State and the Southern regions; recently it has been argued that what makes Sicilian organized crime successful is the fact that it sells protection in a market characterized by an endemic lack of trust. Little attention instead has been paid to the cultural traits and, more specifically to the culture of violence which Sicilian criminality has in common with traditional Mediterranean society. In his investigation of the moral and legal system of a Sicilian criminal organization, the author shows how the same ideas of trust and honour and the notions of crime and of punishment can be found among Sicilian peasants and Sardinian herdsmen as well. This common heritage, which represents the historical memory of a world of material and moral deprivation, contributes to make vain any attempt to make an end to the war against Mafia by using repressive instruments. Other interventions, both at the material and cultural level, are wanted before the actual scenery may significantly change. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Controlling violence: criminal justice, society, and lessons from the US

Based on a lecture to policy makers in Brazil, this essay explores lessons that developing nations can learn from US experiences in the fight against violence and crime. A brief summary of trends in crime, criminal justice policy, and criminal punishment in the US over the past four decades is followed by an evaluation of the dominant imprisonment strategy of the 1970s through 1990s. It is argued that benefits of the massive increase in criminal punishment have been few and that costs have been excessive in terms of material, human, and social capital. Nonetheless, the American experience provides inspiration when we consider the broader societal potential for social organization: values and norms; self-interest and involvement in legitimate exchange networks; mobilization of social capital; and diverse mechanisms of social control. These concepts are explained, and specific institutions and mechanisms to control violence and crime are explored under each of them. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

垄断黑金与暴力魅影——王兴强黑社会性质组织犯罪评析

公安部挂牌督办的王兴强黑社会性质组织为追逐非法利润,以合法企业为外衣,暴力垄断市场;该黑社会性质组织结构严密,并拉拢国家工作人员包庇、纵容犯罪行为。在司法实践中,应加强市场监管,严厉整治社会秩序;制定专门法规,准确认定黑社会性质组织犯罪：强化司法部门的特殊打击能力,有力打击黑社会性质组织犯罪;严厉打击国家工作人员涉黑职务犯罪,彻底消除“保护伞”的庇护;加大对洗钱行为的预防、监控和打击力度。     

SAVINGS AND LOAN FRAUD AS ORGANIZED CRIME: TOWARD A CONCEPTUAL TYPOLOGY OF CORPORATE ILLEGALITY*

This paper proposes a classification scheme for distinguishing “organized crime” and “corporate crime” based not on the occupational position or social status of their perpetrators, but on the motives and methods of the offenses themselves. Using government documents, interviews with FBI investigators and thrift regulators, as well as a variety of secondary sources, it documents patterns of crime in the savings and loan industry and demonstrates that these conspiracies more closely approximate organized crime than corporate crime. Included in the discussion is a brief exploration of the other forms of corporate illegality to which this broader typology can be applied. The paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and policy implications of applying the organized crime model to certain forms of white-collar crime and argues that with the proliferation of financial fraud, it is imperative to replace traditional ad hominem assumptions about corporate illegality with more analytically useful distinctions based on the modus operandi.     

The ecological context of interpersonal violence: from culture to collective efficacy

This brief essay outlines the progression over the last 20 years of ecological theories of interpersonal violence. The period between the present and the early 1980s began with a revival of cultural explanations of violence that paralleled the introduction of the neo-conservative social science and then witnessed a rediscovery of deficits based structural explanations of interpersonal violence under the broad rubric of social disorganization theory. The essay concludes with a more optimistic appraisal of recent refinements of social disorganization theory that consider the mediating effects of collective efficacy on urban crime and interpersonal violence.     

CORPORATIONS,ORGANIZED CRIME,AND THE DISPOSAL OF HAZARDOUS WASTE: AN EXAMINATION OF THE MAKING OF A CRIMINOGENIC REGULATORY STRUCTURE*

This paper explores the relationship between legitimate corporations that generate hazardous waste and elements of organized crime with whom they contract for the removal, treatment, or disposition of those wastes. The scope and importance of hazardous waste as a social problem is first described and the variety of organized crime participation in waste handling is summarized. The paper then explores the factors that enabled organized crime to become active in this sector of the economy. Lax implementation and en forcement, the most common explanations, are discussed. The formation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 is analyzed to show that there was a prior and more fundamental factor: large corporate generators of hazardous waste fought for a regulatory structure that would prove to be highly vulnerable to organized crime intrusion. This fact is then used to discuss and critique two current explanations of the relationship of corporate generators to organized crime waste handlers: “ignorance” and “powerlessness.” Finally, it is argued that although generators did not consciously intend to facilitate organized crime entry into hazardous waste hauling, they did subsequently enjoy tangible benefits from that entry.     

Protective processes: the function of young people's implicit theories of crime in offending behaviour

Abstract

Despite development in high-risk environments, many youths are resilient and do not engage in antisocial behaviour and crime. Research on human traits such as intelligence and morality, suggest that the implicit theories (ITs) people have about the controllability of their behaviour, as either fixed (entity beliefs) or malleable (incremental beliefs) may play a part in successful behavioural outcomes. Using this as a framework, the function of ITs about crime in successful adolescent development was investigated among 422 ‘at-risk’ youths. Incremental ITs of criminality were found to significantly predict less self-reported involvement in youth offending, controlling for academic attainment. Entity ITs, conversely, were associated with an increased rate of participation in deviant behaviour. Further analysis revealed that incremental ITs of criminality moderated the negative effects of associating with delinquent peers on adolescent behaviour. The results demonstrate the direct and indirect protective function of incremental ITs of criminality for youths at risk and highlight the value of investigating further the protective processes that are involved in preventing youth crime.     

Violence as unresponsiveness: Toward a new conception of crime

A theory of crime and violence as “unresponsiveness” was inferred by translating concepts of American criminology into Norwegian. According to this theory, punishment of offenders is a product of a criminality that the punishers share. Reducing crime and violence entails decentralizing and democratizing government. The practice of criminology—testing propositions about crime and violence—becomes problematic.     

Ethnic Minorities, Social Integration and Crime

This article first discusses various dimensions of the social integration of minorities into society. The Netherlands is taken as an example, although research from other countries (such as the US and Sweden) is also taken into consideration. Useful concepts in this regard include the level to which these groups have social, informative and cultural capital that can help them to integrate into the dominant society. The second part considers the theoretical links between integration and criminal behaviour. The author assumes that the fundamental causal processes that lead to the development of criminality and other negative behaviour are independent of country of origin, ethnic group or the country of residence. In other words – that these processes, as they emerge in social control theory, have a universal character. In the second place, she assumes that differences in crime between ethnic groups are linked to group differences in socio-economic integration in the host country and in culture-related variables. Furthermore, there are also differences in the criminality of allochtonous youth within ethnic groups. These are similarly assumed to be linked to differences in commitment to social institutions such as family and school and to differences in accepting specific Western norms and values.     

Anomie and Violence in Indonesia and Timor-Leste, 1997�C2009

The Indonesian social system began to disintegrate in 1997. In the aftermath of social collapse, many forms of state crime, organized crime, terrorism, ethnic violence, religious violence, assassinations and other political violence escalated. An anomie theory interpretation is offered of this rise and the subsequent fall of a complex of serious crime problems. Security sector reintegration, reintegration of perpetrators and reconciliation (without truth) played important parts in enabling the rebuilding of institutions of security.     

The Seriousness of Crime Revisited: Have Attitudes Toward White-Collar Crime Changed?

Social commentators have often observed that the public is indifferent to white-collar criminality. However, the growing attention that white-collar crime has received in recent years raises the possibility of changes in the public's perceptions of such violations. By replicating Rossi et al.'s survey in 1972 of the seriousness of 140 offenses, the present research presents data indicating that white-collar crime has increased in seriousness more than any other offense category, but that it is still viewed as less serious than most other forms of illegality. When different types of white-collar crime were analyzed, we found considerable variation in ratings, with high a degree of seriousness attributed to offenses involving physical harm. Further, while all categories of white-collar criminality increased in seriousness, attitudinal changes have been particularly apparent toward two types, Violent and Corporate Price-Fixing.     

Unintended consequences: changes in organised drug supply in the UK

Social and institutional alarm around crime and violence within South-Asian communities in the UK has grown substantially over the last 10 years. Whether based on imagined threats and moral panics or on realistic observation of facts, such alarm focuses on drug use, related property crime, gang violence, and ultimately on new forms of organised criminality emerging among Pakistanis, Indians or Sri Lankans. This paper sets the scene by examining this imaginary or realistic alarm, to then offer an overview of studies around South Asian drug use and crime. Subsequently, it presents a number of organised crime models which have taken shape within the communities under examination. Finally, it looks at more recent developments, namely at the changes in organised drug supply determined by specific law enforcement choices and by the general political climate in which such choices are made. The case discussed in this paper shows how the features of illicit markets and the characteristics of the criminal enterprises operating in them may be the unintended consequences of specific social and institutional responses to social problems.     

Organized cross-atlantic crime

There is concern about penetration of organized crime in the legitimate business. This penetration can take various forms, ranging from a complete take over to a veritable symbiosis between crime-enterprises and the legitimate industry. This paper describes the interaction between crime-enterprises in the mineral oil market in the Unites States and North-western Europe. It pictures the landscape or moral decay, lack of supervision by law enforcement and the spread of systematic fraud in a branch of industry which has become ripe for infiltration by organized crime. The paper reveals that organized business crime is not just a concern for the United States of Europe alone. If the entrepreneurial landscape has similar features and there are possibilities of personal bridgeheads organized business crime obtains crossborder, transatlantic dimensions. The paper questions the selective attention of law enforcement to easily recognizable crime and the morally dubious attitude of legitimate industry taking advantage of the profitable offers by criminal entrepreneurs.     

Some explanations of crime among four ethnic groups in the Netherlands

Since 1950 there has been large-scale immigration to Western Europe, mainly from Muslim countries. This paper focuses on the degree of involvement in crime of ethnic minority boys as compared to indigenous boys and on the possible causes of these crime involvements. A random sample from three ethnic minority boys (Moroccans, Turks, Surinamese) was taken. A control group consisted of indigenous boys with a comparable socioeconomic background as the minority respondents. Data were gathered about self-report and recorded delinquency, family and school life, leisure time, traditionalism, migration problems, and socioeconomic status. It appears that the arrest rates among the minority youths are substantially higher than among the comparable Dutch boys. A number of explanations are considered: strain, lack of social control, cultural dissonance, and migration problems. Results show that only social control factors explain criminality within the groups, indicating that the causes of criminality among ethnic minority boys may essentially be the same as those among the indigenous boys.     

刑法规范的结构、属性及其在解释论上的意义

从一般法理学出发,对刑法规范结构、属性的揭示,对于合理定位犯罪论的基本范畴、解决刑事违法性判断与一般违法性判断的关系具有重要意义。从对某一类社会关系的法律规制出发,刑法规范结构具有开放的、不完整的特征;而从刑法条文出发,则刑法规范结构则呈现出封闭、完整的形象。从不同视角看待刑法规范,在理解构成要件、违法性判断等基础问题方面会有着相应的、不同的结论。刑法规范属于保护性法律规范,如此即应认为刑事违法性判断存在实质从属性的特征。     

From West Africa to the Balkans: exploring women’s roles in transnational organized crime

There is a lack of reliable data on the role of women in transnational organized crime. So far, the focus of this research has overwhelmingly been on the Italian Mafia. Little is known about women’s roles in other types of organized crime activities. Since there is an ongoing perception that draws on stereotypical imagery of women in organized crime as appendixes to their male counterparts, this article explores whether women are indeed as oppressed in transnational organized crime as they are in other spheres of life. It focuses on the stereotypical constructions of femininity (victims) and masculinity (criminals) and argues that hegemonic gender roles are defined by the dominant European/American culture. The article takes a multicultural feminist approach and studies female criminality in the context of “doing gender,” an approach that assumes that the feminine gender role is something that must be accomplished in the context of specific situations. By studying the roles of women from West Africa and the Balkans in transnational criminal activities, it specifically examines how time and space, as well history and culture, contribute to one’s position in a criminal network.     

Assessing the impact of casino gambling on crime in Mississippi

The introduction of legalized gambling into a community has generated a great deal of hubris regarding concomitant criminality. While Las Vegas has long been synonymous with organized crime, the recent focus has been on the connection between traditional crime and legalized gambling. The conventional wisdom among opponents of this new source of revenue is that casinos attract many undesirables to the community, thereby increasing crime and social disorganization. Routine activities theory would suggest that with increased numbers of tourists, more opportunities for crime will exist. To test this proposition, the frequency of crime before and after the introduction of legalized gambling in Biloxi, Mississippi was examined. Larcey-theft and motor vehicle theft were the only categories of crime to show statistically significant change. Robbery and aggravated assault increased, while murder and rape declined, although the change was not statistically significant for any category of violent crime.     

The changing character of criminality and policing in post-socialist Lithuania: From fighting organized crime to policing marginal populations?

This paper argues that the character ofcriminality in post-socialist Lithuania isundergoing a significant change. Up untilthe mid 1990s criminality was defined bythe conflict between the state and criminalgroups who challenged the state's authorityin the re-distribution of state property.Criminal groups used violence to challengethe state's rules and regulations regardingthe process and outcomes of privatization. The state responded by legal andinstitutional reforms leading tomilitarization and centralization of thepolice force.Successful legal and police reformsinitiated during the early 1990s led to adramatic decline in organized crimeactivities. Crime rates also began tostabilize because of the improvingsocio-economic situation in the country. As a result, by the mid 1990s the characterof criminality began to change. There aresigns that it is increasingly associatedwith the growing social and economicmarginalization of those segments of thepopulation, which did not (or could not)adapt to the introduction of competitivemarkets. The situation was aggravated by arapid decline of employment within theLithuanian economy and significantcurtailment of social welfare provided bythe state. A growing number ofindividuals, especially males with poorskills and education whose employmentopportunities were severely restricted withthe decline in manufacturing industries,were dropping out from the labor force evenin the presence of jobs; were not marrying;and were increasingly plagued by a varietyof social pathologies and health problemsincluding crime, alcoholism, drug abuse,and depression. New forms of entrenchedpoverty unknown during the socialist erasuch as vagabonds and homelessness,including homeless children, has nowdeveloped and is associated with itsapparently inevitable concomitant increasedpetty criminality.     

AGE,DIFFERENTIAL EXPECTATIONS,AND CRIME DESISTANCE*

We specify an individual-level model linking crime desistance to estimates of legal risk, differential expectations, degree of past success at legitimate and criminal pursuits, and age. OLS and logistic regression procedures are used to estimate the model using longitudinal data on serious, previously imprisoned offenders. As predicted, age decreases estimates of the likely payoffs from crime and legitimate employment. Contrary to predictions, age is unrelated to the perceived legal risk of renewed criminal participation. Age, past success at avoiding confinement, expectations of success from crime, and level of education are significant predictors of crime desistance. Neither the perceived legal risk of crime nor expectations of success through straight pursuits significantly predict desistance. We suggest an interpretation for these anomalous findings.