Development of Organised Crimes in U.K. in Comparison with Sicilian and American Mafia

The term organized crime refers to a set of criminal activities undertaken by set criminal actors. Organized crimes constitute of profit making activities which can be classified as, drug-trafficking, kidnapping for profit, extortion, trafficking of people for money, environmental crime: illegal dumping of poisonous waste, complicated credit card fraud, smuggling of goods such as alcohol and tobacco in order to evade excise tax, intellectual property thievery, corruption, tax evasion and fraud against the European Union just to mention a few (Maguire, Morgan & Reiner 2007).

According to UK's SOCA website (Seriously Organized Crime Agency), the answer to the question that, what is organized crime?' is, "organized crime covers a very wide range of activity and individuals involved in a number of crime sectors" (Maguire, Morgan & Reiner 2007, p.777). At times, the term organized crime is used only to describe activities undertaken by underground-type figures. However, much of literature on terrorism, the 2006 SOCA report, and the 2005 Council of Europe report states that organized crime also encompasses activities and people that assist and support serious crimes.

In U.K., the most serious organized crime include trafficking of Class A drugs which include bhang, cocaine, marijuana and heroin, electronic identity fraud and organized immigration fraud (Akens 2009). Other forms of organized crimes present in U.K. include, organized vehicle crime and hijacking, serious robbery, fraud, counterfeiting, cultural property crime and use of firearms by serious criminals.

In U.K., organized crime has adopted a modern pattern of conducting criminal activities which according to Salerno, R. and John S. Tompkins in their 1969 book titled ‘The Crime Confederation' is referred to as "classical pattern of organized crime" (Akens 2009). This new pattern has seen organized crime move gradually from strategic and tactic crimes such as bribery, robbery with violence and assault, to illegal business activities, big businesses and legitimate businesses. Many of organized criminals are seen to have great will to commit and employ high level of tactics to commit crimes.

They therefore establish illegal and legal businesses activities to enable them raise funds and gain power to conduct their criminal activities. They undertake their activities in an organized, persistent and effortless manner and it can simply be said that they are good at what they do. Surprisingly, the illegal activities undertaken by criminal gangs often end up serving the same public which is opposed to their activities as the general public is also involved in vices and illicit activities whose services are rendered by these criminal gangs (Gus 2001).

Classical debates of organized crime are posited within the theories of Cressery and Albini. The Cressery theory of organized crime is also referred to as the Cosa Nostra Theory. The Cressey theory of organized crime encompasses the organizational structure of syndicate crime. This theory is made up of the following proponents, "interpretation of the testimony of informant Joseph Valachi before the McClellan Commission in the sixties, in which the term ‘La Cosa Nostra' was first officially introduced, the organized crime section of the President's Crime Commission Report of 1967 and theoretical interpretations of its principal consultant, sociologist Donald Cressey, and official although belated politics of federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation" (Hagan 2010, p.400).

Donald Cressery together with the Organized Crime Task Force described the following major element of Cressery Theory, "a national wide alliance of at least 24 tightly knit "families" in the United States, membership that is exclusively of Sicilian or Italian descent, and the organization is referred to as Cosa Nostra particularly by East Coast members, and the names and criminal activities of approximately 5,000 participants have been assembled and the formal structure has been pieced together based on Valachi's testimony" (Hagan 2010, p. 400).

One of the arguments of Cressery theory is that everyone who comes into close and occasional contact with criminals is likely to become a criminal too. This is based on behaviour pattern whereby the surrounding environment has a great impact on individual's behaviour. Cressery continues to say that it is common in environments that lean towards criminality such as neighbourhood with high crime rates to find that most people who inhabit there are law-abiding. However, this theory has been criticized as the proposition that neighbourhoods with high rates of crime have inhabitants who are law-abiding only take into consideration the ratio between criminal and noncriminal individuals whereby noncriminal outweighs the criminals (Sutherland, Cressey & Luckersbill 1999).

On the other hand, the Albini model also referred to as the Patron Theory views organized crimes as a collection of series of patron-client relationships. "According to this approach, organized crime groups and their leaders resemble a medieval system of shifting warlords in which whoever has the most power and is able to render the greatest service controls support. The occupation of specific positions within a structure is less important than a developmental-association of peer relations that are informal, flexible, and constantly immersed in conflict" (Hagan 2010, p.402). Therefore, organized crime families can be best describes as feudalism, a series of shifting alliances, rather than corporate bureaucracy in the Albini Model.