Organized crime

“ Law enforcement's way of fighting organized crime has been primitive compared to organized crime's way of operating. Law enforcement must use methods at least as efficient as organized crime's. The public and law enforcement must make a full-scale commitment to destroy the power of organized crime groups. The Commission's program indicates ways to implement that commitment. ”

“ These crimes, along with many others, are enriching and empowering these organizations to the detriment of the American people. A comprehensive and decisive approach is required to dismantle these organized crime syndicates and restore safety for the American people. ”

“ Anti-organized crime work shall adhere to a combination of specialized work and the mass line, and a combination of specialized governance and systematic governance. The work shall be combined with anti-corruption work and with the strengthening of organizations at the primary level, paying equal attention to punishment and prevention and dealing with both symptoms and root causes of organized crime. ”

“ Those who set the law at defiance organized themselves into gangs, and co-operated in crime. Fielding tells us in the same work that nearly a hundred rogues were incorporated in one body, “have officers and a treasury, and have reduced theft and robbery into a regular system.” Among them were men who appeared in all disguises and mixed in all companies. ”

“ For purposes of this Law, "a vicious organization" means a criminal organization which frequently gathers its members to commit criminal or other illegal activities in a certain area or industry, using violence, threat or other means, perpetrates all kinds of evils, bullies and oppresses the people, disrupts social and economic order, and causes considerably bad social influence, but has not developed into an organization of the gang nature. ”

“ The Attorney General himself appeared before one of the committees and pointed out that crime had become highly organized, with strong political connections and illegal methods of procedure; that gangsters and desperate criminals had equipped themselves with every modern convenience and invention; that modern gangsters have no regard for life, property, decency or anything else ”

“ We have already warned that the attitude of the police toward the public is the major cause of crime, that crime will increase with each increase of police power and severity until the whole structure rots and crumbles.
"Yet man has not yet progressed far enough to know how to maintain an organized society without some special body to enforce that organization. ”

“ This method would, perhaps, eliminate certain types of criminals as we have already seen, namely, those in whom the hereditary tendency to crime is dominant. A second means of attacking the problem of crime would be by improving social and economic conditions by means of the interference of the organized authority of society in the form of the state. Legislation and administration directed to social ends might accomplish much in reducing the temptations and opportunities for crime in any group. ”

“ In east Europe, criminals on all levels, from the organized to the petty, often substituted for the dysfunctional, or ideologically hidebound organs of the state. Consider the dispensation of justice. The criminal code of conduct and court system replaced the compromised and lethargic official judiciary. Debt collectors and enforcers stood in for venal and incompetent police forces.
Crime is a growth industry and sustains hordes of professionals: accountants and lawyers, forgers and cross border guides, weapons experts and bankers, mechanics and hit-men. ”

“ It is, of course, true that if a group or society was organized to perpetuate crime and if that is its motive, we would have rather startling problems akin to those that were raised when some years back a particular sect was challenged here as operating on a fraudulent basis. ”

“ While, no doubt, there are agencies that conduct a thoroughly legitimate business, there are unquestionably numerous agencies in this country where one may employ thugs, thieves, incendiaries, dynamiters, perjurers, jury-fixers, manufacturers of evidence, strike-breakers and murderers. A regularly established commerce exists, which enables a rich man, without great difficulty or peril, to hire [282] abandoned criminals, who, for certain prices, will undertake to execute any crime. If one can afford it, one may have always at hand a body of highwaymen or a small private army. ”

“ Judged by ordinary criminal standards, her crimes are so great as to exceed our concepts of punishment. This is a perplexing phenomenon. We know readily what to do with a truant boy or with a vicious murderer. But what shall we do with millions of murderers? Our rules for punishment disintegrate when the criminal gang is a whole nation. For this reason, the customary penalties for individual offenses become inapplicable to mass crime. ”

“ A re-energized police will stamp out the crimes that have plagued our businesses, terrorized the common folk, and embarrassed our country. In the economics of fighting crime, the more resources devoted to crime prevention, the less the amount of crime. ”

“ Regrettable as it may seem, no police force, however large, could arrest all the violators of every law, and no system of courts could dispose of the multitude of offenders. We do the best we can and make an example of a few, hoping thus to persuade the others to be good. If every citizen undertook to exercise his right of arresting every individual whom he saw committing petty crime, the business of the community would come to a standstill and the magistrates' courts would be hopelessly congested with great hordes of prisoners, irate witnesses, and gratuitous policemen. ”

“ When individuals, in spite of the efforts of the law enforcement agencies and the social organizations, engage in antisocial or criminal behavior, the courts are charged with handing down appropriate sentences, and the penal institutions are concerned with rehabilitating the individuals for eventual return to society as cooperative and productive members.
People's Militia units throughout the country are the local police forces that enforce the laws, combat crime, and monitor the population. ”

“ This way, we can steadily constrict the space where crime can operate. The challenge is clear: crime can only come under full control when criminals -- in or out of government -- know we're going to catch them, convict them, and jail them. ”

“ A system of law and police totally unfit for small cultivators—witness the plague of litigation, appeals as 250 to 1 in England, habitual perjury, manufactured crime, and blackmailing by corrupt native police, all destructive of rural amity, co-operation, and industry. ”

“ In the public squares, and in the crowded streets, house-wives, string-bag in hand, grew pale as they listened to the story of the crime, and consigned the perpetrators to the most dreadful punishment. Shop-keepers, standing at the doors of their shops, put it all down to the anarchists, syndicalists, socialists, and radicals, and demanded that special measures should be taken against them. ”

“ The Public Prosecutor’s Office and the police must do their utmost to combat crime; the cooperation of the entire State apparatus and the population is also needed, but only within the strict framework of the law. It is disturbing therefore to note the emergence or expansion of illegal groups of various kinds, particularly at the local level, which use illegal, clandestine methods and commit serious violations of human rights. ”

“ Statistics are also lacking as to the doings [Pg 83] of these military courts. From the decrease of prisoners we cannot draw a favorable conclusion as to the criminality of to-day. The source of crime flows without interruption. The entire activity of justice is a circulus vitiosus, a faulty short conclusion. Neglect leads to crime, penalty to the increase of social weakness, to demoralization, to new crime, new sentence and so on. Crime is a constitutional disease of bourgeois society. ”

“ The police station and the feeing system are the parent of one most barbarous custom; an evil most elusive, its roots, like the roots of the vicious bindweed, so far underground, with such complicated entanglement of relationships, as to be almost ineradicable, involving in some instances State attorneys of good standing, detectives, policemen, sheriffs—in fact, more or less involving the whole force of agents supposed to be protectors of the public. This abuse is called the third degree, or the sweat-box.
A man is arrested, accused of a crime or of knowledge of a crime. ”

“ Organizations of such vast and gigantic magnitude, are incidents of a rude and transition state of society, where population is sparse, where means of protection are sadly at fault, and where so many hardened criminals make their escape through the mock forms of trials in courts, not of justice, but of ignorance and corruption under the name of liberty and a scrupulous tenderness in behalf of a spurious or false sentimental color of humanity ”

“ This State Constabulary in its romantic career has hunted down crime, made raids into "Black Hand" strongholds, protected lives and property from mob violence, and always risen to every emergency where nerve and swift action are required. ”

“ The criminal law which had its origin when violence was rife is admirably adapted to the prevention, prosecuting and punishment of crude crimes, such as arson, rape, robbery, burglary, mayhem, assault, homicide, and "common-law" larceny,—theft accompanied by a trespass. In old times everything was against the man charged with crime—at least that was the attitude of the court and jury. "Aha!" exclaims the judge as the evidence goes in. ”

“ They consume ever growing budgets and rejoice with every new behaviour criminalized by exasperated lawmakers. In the majority of countries, the justice system is a dismal failure and law enforcement agencies are part of the problem, not its solution.
The sad truth is that many types of crime are considered by people to be normative and common behaviours and, thus, go unreported. Victim surveys and self-report studies conducted by criminologists reveal that most crimes go unreported. ”

“ So true is this, that, as we shall presently see, the gravest crimes, especially against persons, precisely because they mostly indicate congenital criminality, follow a more steady and regular movement than these slighter but far more frequent offences against property, public order, and persons, of a more occasional character, and that, as microbes of the world of crime, they are the more direct outcome of social environment. ”

“ Being united, they must act in harmony; repress disorder; punish crime, and prevent outrage, or their organization would be a failure from the start, and society would collapse in the throes of anarchy. None but extreme penalties inflicted with promptitude, are of any avail to quell the spirit of the desperadoes with whom they have to contend; considerable numbers are required to cope successfully with the gangs of murderers, desperadoes and robbers, who infest mining countries, and who, though faithful to no other bond, yet all league willingly against the law. ”

“ The story of these hired terrorists and of this ancient anarchy revived surpasses in cold-blooded criminality any other thing known in modern history. That rich and powerful patrons should be allowed to purchase in the market poor and desperate criminals eager to commit any crime on the calendar for a few dollars, is one of the most amazing and incredible anachronisms of a too self-complaisant Republic. ”

“ A consequence that might be expected to spring from the prevention of crime would be a diminution in the numbers of the police. It is their duty to arrest criminals, and if the criminals are shut up their occupation is gone. ”

“ I think the foulest crime in the decalogue of crime, worse than any named in the Ten Commandments of the Mosaic law, lower far than stealing, worse than burglary, as bad as murder, is the crime that has been perpetrated here in your city openly, in the face of day, trying to break down the elective franchise and rob the people of their right to govern themselves. ”

“ So, also, the law, which is intended to prevent crime, in its general spread among the community, by regulations, police organization, and otherwise, which are adapted for the protection of the lives and property of citizens, for the dispersion of mobs, for the arrest of thieves and assassins, for the watch which is kept over the community, as well as over this class of people, is more efficient than punishment of crimes after they have been committed. ”

“ To aid a committee of this body merely in a legislative purpose, a citizen, guilty of no crime, charged with no offence, presumed to be innocent, honored and beloved in his neighborhood, may be seized, handcuffed, kidnapped, and dragged away from home, hurried across State lines, brought here as criminal, and then thrust into jail. ”

“ Thus every member of society who offers a facility to the commission of crime, or does not endeavor to hinder its commission, is, in a degree, responsible for it. It is absurd to suppose that the crimes in great cities are attributable altogether to the free agency of the poor wretches who are transported or hung for them. ”

“ In many places where the commission of crime is alleged against one of our color, the ordinary processes of the law are set aside as too slow for the impetuous justice of the infuriated populace. They take the law into their own bloody hands and proceed to whip, stab, shoot, hang, or burn the alleged culprit, without the intervention of courts, counsel, judges, juries, or witnesses. ”

“ They think it a sounder principle of government to equip and maintain vast penal systems—with chain gangs, schools of crime, depravity and death, than to support schools and churches. Millions of money are squandered annually to curb crime, when a few thousand dollars, properly applied, would prove to be a more humane, a more profitable preventive. ”