Personal Perception of Organized Crime

Personal Perception of Organized Crime

In the beginning of my criminal justice courses, I believed organized crime to be a group of people using crime and violence to get ahead in life. These groups can go undetected while committing these criminal acts. I honestly thought that organized crime groups were like the Sopranos or something out of the movies I have seen. I was aware of the fact that organized crime happens all over the world and that most of it does take place in foreign countries. I learned while reading the chapters for this course that there are different definitions for what organized crime is and I do not think that my own definition of organized crime was that different.

According to the reading (2007) the American law enforcement groups have been slack concerning to responding to the insightful changes happening with organized crime that has been brought about by globalization. The European agencies have drastically changed their views as well as the structure of organized crime.

The National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) in the United Kingdom describe organized crime in four ways. These four ways include that the organized crime group will usually contain at least three people, the criminal activity within the group is usually ongoing and indistinct in length, the group will be motivated by the desire for revenue or even power, and the group will commit very serious criminal offenses (Lyman & Potter, 2007).

This is the idea that I previously had of crime organizations before doing the research, just more in detail than my original idea.

There are different types of organized crime all around the world. The types of organized crimes range from conventional organized crime to the modern organized networks. These types include standard hierarchy, regional hierarchy, clustered hierarchy, core groups, and criminal network. Because these types are ideal types this means the criminal organizations will not all match to a specific type, but most of them will have the main characteristics of at least one of the types. The first three types are the closest to the conventional forms of organized crime while the last two are the closest to the forms of modern organized crime (Lyman & Potter, 2007). Before reading I was unaware, there were different types of organized crime. I always thought every organized crime group was all out for the same thing, money and power.

There are different theories why a person would start an organized crime group or join a group. Some say that there are individual characteristics, including greed, opportunism, and some sort of inclination for violence. These primary factors contribute to an individual's rise in the criminal underworld. There is no single theory that will explain why a person will commit a crime. These theories include the alien conspiracy theory, rational choice theory, and the deterrence theory. The most current is the alien conspiracy theory. This theory blames everyone as well as the influences on people