Organized Crime in the U.S.

Organized Crime Research (kvl-homepage)	Organized Crime in the U.S. The material presented on this page deals with various aspects of organized crime and the fight against organized crime in the United States. Some of the material has originally been collected for a doctoral thesis. Check out the following abstracts for further clues:
		*The Conceptual History of Organized Crime* A paper presented at the international conference "International Organized Crime: Myth, Power, Profit," sponsored by the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, in October 1999, explores the conceptual history of organized crime in the United States and Germany.
		*Definitions of Organized Crime* What is organized crime? How to define it? Can you define it? Find out what scholars and official committees in the U.S. and elsewhere have written over the years from a selection of some 180 quotes.
		*"The Godfather" and Organized Crime* "The Godfather had more influence on the public mind and the minds of many public officials than did any library filled with scholarly works that argued for the true nature of organized crime," note Dennis Kenney and Jim Finckenauer in their textbook on "Organized Crime in America" (Wadsworth Publishing, 1995, p. 246). But what exactly is it that Mario Puzo wrote about organized crime in his famous novel? Take a look at the passages in Godfather that pertain to the nature of organized crime.
		*The U.S. Congress and Organized Crime* What impact has the issue of organized crime had on Congress? The answer is: Since the late 1950s House and Senate have spent a great deal of time investigating organized crime. Check out an extensive list of congressional hearings and reports.
		*Organized Crime and Federal Legislation* How has the concept of organized crime been translated into law? The answer is: not a great deal. Interestingly, the term "racketeering," which was most popular in the 1930s, has prevailed in legal terminology, namely in the RICO Statute. A list of federal racketeering laws tells of the history of anti-organized-crime laws in the U.S. Also included in this file are the most important passages from the Anti-Mafia-Law proposed by Senator McClellan in the mid-1960s and the RICO Statute itself.
		*The Concept and Theory of Organized Crime* Where has the term "organized crime" originally come from, how has its meaning changed over time, and what actors and social influences have brought about these changes? What are the contributions of the social sciences to the understanding of organized crime? What concrete concepts and empirical data are at the base of the current public and scientific understanding of organized crime in the United States? Can the various and often conflicting approaches to the understanding of organized crime be combined in a single model of organized crime? These questions are addressed in a German-language study. Find out more from an English abstract of the book.
		*Organized Crime Book Reviews* Learn more about organized crime in the U.S. and various other countries from a selection of over 50 book reviews.
		*Organized Crime Links* Links to organized-crime related web sites (U.S. and other countries).
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