NCJ Number
175766
Journal
Howard Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 37 Issue: Dated: Pages: 0-374
Date Published
1998
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This article examines the phenomenon of money laundering as a form of criminal money management.
Abstract
The influential Kefauver Committee hearings in the early 1950's limited the notion of organized crime to ethnicity and conspiratorial syndicates, and Hollywood films helped to disseminate this interpretation universally. Although generally discredited by criminologists from the 1970's, this populist notion of "mafia" has been given a new lease on life through the emergence and proliferation of Russian organized crime outside the former Soviet Union. Already conversant with Cold War rhetoric and the simplistic dichotomy between capitalism and communism, the media offer an equally prejudiced and simplistic interpretation of the Russian "mafia" that threatens to obfuscate and consequently exacerbate the actual dangers presented by its proliferation. If, as Russian criminologist Azalea Dolgova claims, organized crime reflects the society in which it operates, its presence in the West demands an analysis of those conditions conducive to its growth. Western society provides a plethora of opportunity for organized crime from any ethnic or national background. No systems are incorruptible, and if the increase of organized crime is viewed as being commensurate with an increase in corruptibility, then the West is by no means without fault in this proliferation. If organized crime is accepted for what it is, i.e., an illegal entrepreneurial structure that responds to market dynamics of supply and demand, then analysts must explore the nature and extent of the demands by society for the commodities organized crime supplies. 2 notes and 15 references