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. Organized crime is only one aspect of the crime problem in America. 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 existence of organized crime until the 1960s when he was forced to admit that there was such an enterprise. Organized crime differs from other types of crime in the goods and services provided and in the relationship between the criminal enterprise and its customers:
Organized crime supplies goods or services wanted by a large number of people--desperately needed cash, narcotics, prostitution, the chance to gamble. These are its principle sources of income. They are consensual crimes for the most part, desired by the consuming public. This fact distinguishes the main activities of organized crime from most other crime (Clark, 1970, 68).
The public creates the demand for the activities of organized crime, and this also means that law enforcement is working against the strong...