Deck 1: What Is Organized Crime

Question 1

Why do you think The Godfather is the best-selling book about crime ever published, and that there is continuing fascination with organized crime in movies and on television?

Answer 1

The Godfather Although it is a novel, people are fascinated by organized crime, the mafia, and all the associated descriptions Perhaps the personalities of organized crime figures, combined with the fact that organized crime often provides goods and services in public demand that happen to be illegal, contribute to our continuing interest in organized crime in all its manifestations

Question 2

How did the President's Crime Commission characterize organized crime in its report 40 years ago?

Answer 2

"Our knowledge of the structure which makes 'organized crime' organized is somewhat comparable to the knowledge of Standard Oil which could be gleaned from gasoline station attendants"

Question 3

What is a consensus definition of organized crime among authors who have written on the subject?

Answer 3

Organized crime is a continuing criminal enterprise that rationally works to profit from illicit activities that are often in great public demand Its continuing existence is maintained through the use of force, threats, monopoly control, and/or the corruption of public officials See Table 11 in the text

Question 4

What is the difference between white-collar and organized crime?

Question 5

How can the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s be seen as part of organized crime?

Question 6

How is terrorism different from organized crime?

Question 7

What are the three general categories of organized crime activity?

Question 8

What constitutes provision of illicit services?

Question 9

What constitutes provision of illicit goods?

Question 10

What constitutes the infiltration of legitimate business?

Question 11

How are the provision of illicit goods and services most clearly distinguished from the infiltration of legitimate business?

Question 12

How is the infiltration of legitimate business more predatory than the provision of illicit goods and services?

Question 13

Why is description of organized crime in terms of ethnicity misleading?

Question 14

Why are the 11 different types of organized crime groups described by the President's Commission on Organized Crime a curious mixture?

Question 15

Why are biographical attributes e.g., ethnicity) of organized crime groups not very useful?

Question 16

How do we know that no single ethnic group accounts for organized crime, and that local criminal opportunities offer a much more powerful way to explain organized crime?

Question 17

Why is catering to public demands through illicit goods and services a more common form of organized crime activity than infiltration of business?

Question 18

What did James Calder find in his study of the lives of "mafia women"?

Question 19

How have women become more involved in organized crime in Italy?

Question 20

A study of 40 organized crime cases in the Netherlands found women to have what role in the illegal activity?

Question 21

Why are police arrests not a true indicator of the extent of organized crime activity?

Question 22

How have arrests for gambling changed over the past 38 years, and why?

Question 23

How have arrests for drugs changed over the past 40 years, and why?

Question 24

Why are all gambling, drug, prostitution, and stolen property arrests not necessarily related to organized crime?