Discussion 7 Discussion Topic Available on Mar 25, 2024 12:01 AM. Submission restricted before availability starts. 1) Why it is important for organized crime groups to become involved in legitimate businesses? 2) How do organized crime groups use racketeering? 3) In what ways do labor and business racketeering differ? Powerpoint information (2 attached) must be implemented and cited. Please utilize 1 of 2 references to the power point presentations if applicable (OR 1 outside reference), in addition to the textbook excerpts included on this page. Total: at least 2 references. Discussion is to be in APA Format Initial Discussion posts must be at least 160 words. Quotes and references must have appropriate attribution. Include “in-text” APA Citations, including page numbers. Quotes and references must have appropriate attribution. Include "in-text" APA Citations, including page numbers. Tudor must be APA Orientated. I am a long-term customer. Do not train new employees on my time. Rohan MO has repeatedly done a great job on my prior discussions in this class. Requested, If possible. Textbook Citation: Lyman, M. D., & Potter, G. (2018). Organized Crime (7th ed.). Pearson Education (US). https://ccis.vitalsource.com/books/9780134831763 Page 169: Business Racketeering Perhaps the most disturbing claim made against the more sophisticated organized crime groups is the one suggesting that these organizations are infiltrating and controlling large areas of legitimate business through business racketeering. Although it could be argued that some illicit enterprises, such as gambling, enjoy more public tolerance than others, there is widespread concern that underworld criminals are widely involved in the ownership of legitimate construction, solid waste disposal, food processing, and trucking businesses, as well as restaurants, bars, racetracks, and casinos. Of great concern is that syndicates are using profits generated from their legitimate enterprises to expand their illicit undertakings. Another concern is that organized criminals, by combining their illicit and licit businesses, will make it difficult if not impossible for legitimate businesspersons to compete with them. Furthermore, the assumption by many law enforcement officials that the Mafia is a single, unified, national criminal consortium makes this suggestion even more disturbing, since it implies that much criminal involvement in legitimate businesses cannot be controlled. Wealthy criminal organizations need new areas in which to reinvest newly made illicit profits and thus have legitimate businesses. Buying, muscling into, or starting legitimate businesses also permits organized criminals not only to evade their income tax obligations but also to continue their illicit operations discreetly behind seemingly innocent fronts. These assumptions are based on the premise that criminal syndicates operate like any other legitimate business. That is, they are designed to maximize profits through diversification of their activities. Reasons to Seek Legitimacy Organized crime groups seek both profitable and safe investments. Therefore, these groups make calculated moves into a community's commercial life through ownership of legitimate businesses. Anderson (1979a) suggests that participation in legitimate business serves several needs. First, this participation offers concealment opportunities for illegal activities, such as pickup points for gambling operations and disposal points for stolen goods. Second, these businesses provide money-laundering opportunities for illegal profits. The Pennsylvania Crime Commission (1980: 227–230) provides evidence of laundering operations involving banks, beer distributorships, car dealerships, bars, and nightclubs. Third, legitimate businesses are excellent sources of reportable and legitimate income. Organized crime groups regularly use bars and restaurants as legitimate reporting mechanisms because their high cash volumes are ideal for concealing illegal profits (Pennsylvania Crime Commission 1984). Finally, active participation in legitimate businesses enhances the integration of crime group members with members of the business community. Chambliss (1978) reported that distinctions between organized crime and legitimate businesses in Seattle were nearly impossible to discern. In his Morrisburg study, Potter (1994) reported intense intertwinement of legal and illegal businesses serving as gambling collection points, pornographic film distribution points, fencing and loan-sharking operations, and street- level prostitution operations. Organized crime provides lucrative services to some businesspeople in a community. This does not imply that all businesses deal with organized crime or that all organized crime activities are favorable for business but that, in a significant number of specific situations, businesses avail themselves of the services of organized crime. Relationships between fences and retail establishments are particularly good examples. In fact, in her classic study of fencing, Walsh (1977) estimated that about two-thirds of the fences active in the purchase and resale of stolen goods were also legitimate business proprietors. Page 170: Organized crime's racketeering services provide businesses with potent weapons for harassing competitors or securing favorable employee contracts (Chambliss 1978; Pennsylvania Crime Commission 1980; Block and Chambliss 1981; Jenkins and Potter 1986). The literature includes numerous examples of this symbiotic relationship: the automobile industry's attempts to suppress unionization (Pearce 1976), local industry's collusion with the Teamsters (Chambliss 1978), the activities of the Roofers Union (Pennsylvania Crime Commission 1980), and corruption in the garment manufacturing industry (Block and Chambliss 1981). Business racketeering provides opportunities for management to collaborate in efforts to gain control of unions and their pension funds. The Teamsters union is an example of this relationship, as is organized crime's extensive influence in Philadelphia area union health care plans (Pennsylvania Crime Commission 1983). Page 172: One of the first to identify labor racketeering as a profitable venture in the early years of the twentieth century was New York racketeer Arnold Rothstein. “Lepke” Buchalter and Jacob Shapiro then developed labor racketeering into a major criminal enterprise in the 1930s and 1940s (Block and Chambliss 1981; Jenkins and Potter 1986). By the 1950s, the Kefauver Committee was suggesting that organized crime groups played dominant roles in the labor unions of eight industries: the hotel and restaurant industry, baking, distilling of alcoholic beverages, trucking, garment manufacturing, carpentry, meat packing, and construction (Moore 1974: 68–79). Page 173; Today, labor racketeering continues to be a major business of organized crime. The three major activities by which organized crime realizes illicit profits are (1) sweetheart contracts, (2) the misuse of union benefit funds, and (3) extortion, or strike insurance. A sweetheart contract is a contract that an employer and union officials devise with substandard terms for union members. This contract does immeasurable damage to the interests of union members. In return for a bribe paid to corrupt union officials, the company is able to negotiate a highly beneficial contract with its workers. Union demands for higher wages, better working conditions, and stronger benefit packages are reduced to benefit the company. It increases its profits at the expense of workers. The only winners in the negotiation of a sweetheart contract are the company and the mob-controlled union officials themselves. In addition to reducing workers' legitimate economic benefits, a sweetheart contract also usually allows the company to use nonunion labor in specific circumstances, thereby reducing the opportunity for employment of union members.

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Discussion 7 Discussion Topic Available on Mar 25, 2024 12:01 AM. Submission restricted before availability starts. 1) Why it is important for organized crime groups to become involved in legitimate businesses? 2) How do organized crime groups use racketeering? 3) In what ways do labor and business racketeering differ