Organized Crime Essay

US seaports have a long history that reflects the infiltration of criminal organizations in port facilities. The network of people, equipment, and facilities that are necessary to conduct crime and to make it profitable in the marine environment renders port crime impractical without these connections. Organized criminal groups exercise systematic methods that include, but are not limited to, concealment techniques, fraudulent documents, use of transit countries, corrupt labour, and intimidation of both workers and law enforcement personnel. The type of offences committed by organized groups either directly contribute to generating profit such as the smuggling and theft activities themselves, or they are the supporting offences that enable the profit-oriented crime to exist, like the tactics used by the corrupt labor force to facilitate the crime. Despite many improvements in …show more content…
The impact of globalization has made the procurement of virtually any commodity for which a person is willing to pay for a real possibility. A 2012 Congressional Research Service report on organized crime, cites that “Organized crime groups are becoming more entrepreneurial or market focused, reacting to changes in both illicit and licit economies” (CRS 2012, 2). In other words, organized crime groups are operating under the same supply and demand principle that legitimate businesses are. It could be in the traditional form for which the public is accustomed to associating organized crime with such as cocaine, methamphetamine, heroine, marijuana, and more recently pharmaceuticals or precursor chemicals, but it could also be commercial products that have been banned in the US or just “hard to get” items. With the infiltration of organized crime on all coasts, there is no market in the world that is not being