Organized Crime and American Power: A HistoryUniversity of Toronto Press, 2001年1月1日 - 468 頁 Organized crime, understood in a literal sense as systematic illegal activity for money or power, is as old as the first systems of law and government and as international as trade. Piracy, banditry, kidnapping, extortion, forgery, fraud, and trading in stolen or illegal goods and services are all ancient occupations that have often involved the active participation of landowners, merchants, and government officials. Many people today, however, follow the lead of the US government and American commentators and understand organized crime as being virtually synonymous with super-criminal 'Mafia-type' organizations. These are usually seen as separate entities, distinct from legitimate society but possessing almost unlimited regional, national, and even international power. As background to this understanding of organized crime there exists a consensus among most commentators that suggests that the United States has had the most experience and success in dealing with the problem. In Organized Crime and American Power: A History, Michael Woodiwiss argues that organized criminal activity has never been a serious threat to established economic and political power structures in the United States but more often a fluid, variable, and open-ended phenomenon that has, in fact, complemented those structures. Conventional histories of the problem tend to focus on outlaws in peripheral feudal societies, most commonly Sicily, for their antecedents. Woodiwiss by contrast finds his antecedents in the systematic criminal activity of the powerful and respectable in those ancient and early modern societies that we usually understand to be at the centre of 'civilized' development and continues to emphasize the crimes of the powerful throughout his wide ranging overview. He surveys the organization of crime in the Southern states after the American Civil War; the organized crimes of American business interests; the causes and corrupt consequences of the US campaign to prohibit alcohol and other 'vices'; the elaboration of the Mafia conspiracy interpretation of organized crime and the consequent 'dumbing of discourse' about the problem, not just nationally but internationally. Emphasizing the importance of collaboration, as much as confrontation, between government and criminals, Woodiwiss illustrates how crime control policies based on the Mafia paradigm have not only failed to address much organized criminal behaviour, but have, in many ways, proved counterproductive and damaging to individual rights and social stability. |
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第 1 到 5 筆結果,共 60 筆
... politicians , police officers , lawyers , or profes- sional thieves in terms suggesting their crimes were organized . Only a few would have associated organized crime almost exclusively with conspiratorial groups among foreign career ...
... politicians and public officials . Organized crime was in effect syn- onymous with local political corruption . America's early twentieth - century moral reformers were successful in getting the laws they wanted on the statute books and ...
... politicians , judges , professionals such as lawyers , and ostensi- bly legitimate businessmen . This perception of organized crime as systematic illegal activity and part of the social , economic , and political systems began to be sup ...
... politicians , police , prison officers , lawyers , prosecutors , and judges being honest and efficient . This clearly has never been the case , and even the selective application of the organized crime control laws since the 1970s has ...
... politicians and respectable members of business and professional communities have gained more from organized crimi- nal activity than any other group and , for the most part , stayed out of prison . Countless scandals have indicated ...
內容
Old World Antecedents and the Rise of American Power | 15 |
Whitewash Racism Xenophobia and the Origins of Organized Crime in the United States | 68 |
Organized Crime and Corporate Power 18651950 | 105 |
Americas Moral Crusade and the Organization of Illegal Markets 17891950 | 170 |
Organized Crime and the Dumbing of American Discourse 1920 to the Present | 227 |
Industrial and Corporate Racketeering 1950 to the Present | 312 |