ORGANIZED CRIME

Organized Crime

Organized Crime

Introduction

Organized Crime in America has had a huge impact on how the criminal justice system in America operates. Criminals all over the world today area sophisticated enough to exploit any means to carry out their illegal tasks. To combat the problem states must employ new methods of dealing with the problem. In pioneering these new techniques we challenge the traditional methods of the US criminal justice order. To deal with organized crime the legal system suddenly balances the rights of the accused person with the rights of society to live in a crime-free society.

Discussion

A major concern in America today is the constant media emphasis on spiraling crime figures. We hear about violent crimes and ruthless criminals in localities and communities have begun to get nervous. The entrenched idea that the criminal process in America is disproportionately concerned with the offender and his rights bearing little concern for the community that has been affected by his criminal deed. The impression that we are overwhelmed by criminal activity and that our police force does not have the tools to deal with this overwhelming amount of crime has been reinforced by many politicians and law enforcers.

How does one quell the disquiet? The response of the US government is to re-empower communities and giving each person a role in shielding themselves from criminality through self policing and the use of crime prevention knowledge, crime prevention resources and skills. It has gone farther than this. To identify the government's strategy we must examine the classical theorist Herbert Packer who identifies two contrasting models of criminal process, (i) due process and (ii) crime control. The former meaning that the pre-trial procedures adopted by the police have been applied in due course of law. The latter's ideals surround the evaporation of public order and the inability of police to bring offenders to justice. The type of model adopted by the government is a matter of policy.

Origins and conceptual background

"Piracy and banditry were to the pre-industrial world what organized misdeed is to up to date society" (Paul Lunde, coordinated misdeed, 2004). Today, misdeed is considered of as an built-up phenomenon, but for most of human annals it was the country world that was crime-ridden. Pirates and bandits attacked trade routes, at times harshly disrupting commerce, lifting charges, insurance rates and charges to the consumer.

Organized misdeed is profoundly connected to the lesson problem of integrating subcivilized energy into civilized state building. The early Christian world was dubious about an unqualified legitimacy of nation-states. St. Augustine very well characterised them as what would now be called kleptocracies, states founded on robbery: "If fairness be disregarded, what are states but large bandit musicians, and what are bandit musicians but small states?" (De Civ. Dei iv, 4). Alater North African author, Ibn Khaldun, discerning the predatorial conquests of the Mongol foremost Tamerlane in the 14th years, developed a theory of state formation founded on the periodic conquest of civilized states by barbarians, who are rapidly ...