NCJ Number
231800
Journal
Global Crime Volume: 11 Issue: 3 Dated: August 2010 Pages: 279-297
Date Published
August 2010
Length
19 pages
Annotation
This article examines the hypothesis that criminal constitutions perform specific functions within criminal organizations.
Abstract
Why do criminals use constitutions? This article argues that constitutions perform three functions in criminal organizations. First, criminal constitutions promote consensus by creating common knowledge among criminals about what the organization expects of them and what they can expect of the organization's other members. Second, criminal constitutions regulate behaviors that are privately beneficially to individual criminals but costly to their organization as a whole. Third, criminal constitutions generate information about member misconduct and coordinate the enforcement of rules that prohibit such behavior. By performing these functions, constitutions facilitate criminal cooperation and enhance criminals' profit. To examine our hypothesis we examine the constitutions of two criminal organizations: eighteenth-century Caribbean pirates and the contemporary Californian prison gang, La Nuestra Familia. Appendix (Published Abstract)