Paper Example. Businesses Involved in Organized Crime

Organized crime is a criminal enterprise model where participants operate wholly or partially in separate countries of the world. Individuals involved in organized crime work in self-perpetuating associations that deal with transnational criminal activities perpetrated by illegal means. According to Lyman and Potter (1997), these individuals operate in dedicated hierarchies organized in networks or cells. One of the most notable characteristics of organized crime is that the enterprise uses corruption and violence to protect its investments and cover its tracks from suspicious law enforcement agents.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Crimes that are most susceptible to organized crime include human trafficking, child trafficking, forced labor, smuggling of goods, drug trafficking, money laundering, illegal gambling, arms trafficking, and extortion. Other common crimes, according to Lyman and Potter (1997), include the smuggling of cultural property such as art and artifacts and illegal wildlife trade around the globe. In most incidences of organized crimes, the perpetrators use large sums of money and intimidation to bypass government officials. Besides, they may also collaborate with unethical law enforcement agents to facilitate their criminal enterprise.

Most of the activities that attract the interests of organized crime operate in high-profit margins and high risks. Many of these activities, such as trafficking, theft, and control of drug territories, yield significant profit margins for the organized criminals. Lyman and Potter (1997) state that drug trafficking and money laundering are the most lucrative illegal activities compared to other forms of trafficking. Notably, drug and money laundering are profitable because they operate near the legal, economic activities in the economy. On the other hand, illegal gambling is the least lucrative because it works in a small pool of events, and governments can easily track the revenues and regulate the enterprise even though money launderers use gambling schemes to cover their activities.

There are several notable implications of legalizing illegal activities perpetrated by organized criminals. According to Lyman and Potter (1997), a study about legalizing marijuana in the United States indicated that the prior methods used by the drug enforcement agencies failed to meet their intended purpose and that they increased the chances of violence and death as well as corruption. The efforts had a countervailing implication and could not reduce the apparent effects of organized crimes. Legalizing businesses such as prostitution and drug trafficking would reduce the market size considerably. The measure can, in theory, cause organized criminal gangs to pull out of those markets as the profits would be squeezed by government regulation.

Furthermore, reduced market shares would mean that these criminal gangs would need to reduce their operating costs in those regions, especially if they are not making economic profits compared to in a deregulated environment. Most gangs incur operation costs in hiring contract enforcers and drug or merchandise protectors. Therefore, legalizing these business activities would mean reduced profit incentives, which therefore means that organized crime enforcers would face competition from new market entrants. The effect points to reduced profit margins and escalation of conflicts resulting from competition for control of drug territories. According to Lyman and Potter (1997), this would be a considerable effect of legalizing illegal businesses.

Money Laundering

Money laundering is the process by which individuals or institutions try to legitimize illegally earned money. According to Teichmann (2019), the process involves making large amounts generated through illegitimate means such as drug trafficking appear as proceeds of legal business activity. If I were assigned to a task force to investigate money laundering operations, I would focus on those business ventures and activities that prefer cash payments as the primary mode of payment.

In a community with business ventures such as restaurants, nightclubs, casinos, and other forms of gaming institutions, businesses such as restaurants and nightclubs are not easy to account for their revenues and costs. It is not easy to account for how individuals opt to pay for services rendered or products consumed, primarily if they use cash payments. This way, Teichmann (2019) states that these businesses find it easy to launder the cash they collect as well as other funds obtained from criminal activities elsewhere into clean money.

Teichmann (2019) outlines the methods used by criminals to launder money from dirty to clean money. The first method includes placing the illegally earned money back into the monetary system. According to Teichmann (2019), this step involves depositing money in small undetectable amounts into financial systems such as banks or insurance schemes. In these instances, I will focus on businesses that seem to make regular coordinated deposits that are more than the money that they earn from their legitimate business.

After the money has been placed back into the financial system, the depositors or account holders must account for the source of the proceeds. Therefore, Lyman and Potter (1997) illustrated tricks such as layering, which involve concealing inappropriate financial entries in bookkeeping mechanisms to legitimize the money. In this regard, money launderers use accounting techniques to mask the sources of the funds and portray the illegal funds as from legitimate business transactions. However, in most cases, these businesses tend to make mistakes when trying to legitimize their business transactions. These mistakes are the options I would take to determine whether a company is legitimate or not.

After the money has been laundered into the economy, the launderers tend to withdraw it so that they can use it in whatever means they need to. In many cases, criminals are people of interest because of their way of life. Buchanan (2004) notes that criminal money launderers withdraw a lot of money frequently, which indicates an upsurge of illegally earned money. As a federal investigator, I would look into those businesses that seem to increase their cash receipts to funnel their cash flow through a legitimate business.

Organized crime uses legitimate businesses to clean their money to avoid detection from law enforcement. These businesses are usually consistent financial investments made on behalf of these money launderers. According to Buchanan (2004), these criminals prefer to invest in service delivery where clients pay in cash. Cash payments help fraudulent businesses to launder funds and invest in other areas such as real estate, purchase of luxurious commodities, and collection of artifacts (Lyman and Potter, 1997). After opening or investing in a legitimate cash-based business, they then take control of the business by inflating the receipts so that they clean their surplus cash through the business.

Community Policing as a Method of Drug Control

In dealing with the use and spread of illegal drugs and substance abuse, community policing seems like a less violent option than other traditional methods. Stein and Griffith (2017) observe that unlike other methods, community policing employs socially appropriate means to deal with drug and substance abuse in the community. Instead of arresting people for drug use, the concept of community policing seeks to prevent the entry and distribution of drugs into the neighborhood.

Furthermore, in traditional methods of drug control, culprits who deal in drug propagating business operate in the disguise of legitimate individuals conducting legal business in the community. Stein and Griffith (2017) state that community policing policies seek to deal with public safety other than put emphasis on arrest and incarceration to control drug use. The concept of community policing concentrates on methods to implement and improve community order on those places that are more susceptible to drug and substance abuse.

Community policing employs social mechanisms to combat the spread and use of drug abuse in a community. The concept does this by applying community-oriented officer programs (COPS) (Stein and Griffith, 2017). In this approach, the community becomes the focus of the efforts used to combat drug abuse and trafficking. The policy makes the drug users as subjects of assistance projects used to rehabilitate and prevent potential trafficking incidences. According to Lyman and Potter (1997), the COPS policies seek to avoid incarceration and to arrest by replacing it with education and awareness against drugs and trafficking in communities.

In my opinion, I feel that the concept of community policing works to eradicate and control substance and drug abuse. The idea involves people who are not included in the traditional means of drug and trafficking control. This way, the concept incorporates members of communities to lead efforts to control the use of drugs in our communities. The approach reduces the negative implications of efforts to control the spread of drug abuse and trafficking in the community.

Another reason I feel that community policing is working as it employs a social approach to a recurrent problem. Using designated officers in the community involves the engagement of community leaders who understand the issues that affect the specific community. Besides, designated officers have a better relationship with demographic composition and the topographic structure of the community, which is a cornerstone of effective community policing. The use of community leaders increases the chances of providing an opportunity to eradicate the menace of drugs and criminal activity in society. Moreover, many community policing engagements happen through community-based social services providers already existing in those communities. As such, the services involve the essential elements of the community in the fight against drug use.

Drug Control and Enforcement

Conventional drug and substance control mechanisms involve different approaches from the national level to the community level interventions. According to Chatwin (2018), several layers of prevention and control mechanisms used to mitigate illicit use and procurement as well as distribution of drugs are both inclusive and exclusive. According to Lyman and Potter (1997), conventional means of controlling the movement of drug demand a comprehensive approach toward the source and the market of those drugs. The organizations associated with prevention and monitoring drug distribution are charged with the responsibility of identifying and curbing the routes through which drugs get to the intended markets.

In their book, Lyman and Potter (1997) argue that several layers of drug control that include community and individual efforts provide a holistic approach to drug control. In the United States, for example, drug control mechanisms include identifying the sources of the drugs and eliminating entry into the country. Government factions such as the Drug Enforcement Agency fight to prevent drugs from entering the country, thereby acting as the first line of defense towards drug control. These agencies operate as control and regulatory institutions where drug traffickers are arrested, prosecuted, and jailed for crimes committed.

The other mechanisms used include school-based programs where school-going children are taught how to identify different types of drugs and how to protect themselves from interacting with them.