Americans at times seem to be consumed by crime, showing at one and the same time a fear of crime and a fascination with it. Crime is a topic in the daily newspaper, often crowding other news off the front pages. Crime and fear of crime are important subjects in political campaigns. Crime is a staple on entertainment programs on television and in books and movies which detail both real and fictional crimes from a wide variety of points of view. Organized crime is only one aspect of the crime problem in America. In the past, organized crime was a more potent and feared force, especially in the cities of the Northeast, but then and now organized crime has an effect on society in terms of added costs to goods and services, increased costs for law enforcement, and an effect on the administration of justice and on the degree to which Americans place their trust in their law enforcement and judicial systems. Organized crime has also served as a sort of reverse royalty in American society and has been immortalized in books and films through most of this century. Each of the immigrant groups that came to America brought with them a negative element in the from of criminal gangs that would prey on other immigrants and then on American society as a whole. The Italian segment of organized crime, variously known as the Mafia or La Cosa Nostra, prevailed for decades but has fallen on hard times because of a changed environment and improved law enforcement. Other organized groups have been eager to take the Mafia's place and has found drug smuggling in particular a lucrative activity. An examination of the history of organized crime in this century points to some of the effects the existence of these criminal organizations have had on American culture.
Organized crime is something over which Americans have long argued, with some believing there is no such thing while others are convinced that there is. J. Edgar Hoover long denied the...