Book Review: America's Crime Problem: An Introduction to Criminology
| Published date | 01 June 1986 |
| Date | 01 June 1986 |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486908601900211 |
| Author | Satyanshu K Mukherjee |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
BOOK
REVIEWS 127
The book argues that organized criminal groups, whether or not they want to, are
channelled into white collar criminal activity by the illicit nature of their operations.
Ultimately, they must move some of their illicit funds into legitimate business or
their stolen property into legitimate marketing outlets. Fraudulent schemes become
necessary to establish legitimate title to the property and to deal with tax problems
on the illicit earnings. In addition to the fact that they have to resort to white collar
crime to some extent, organized criminal groups are increasingly finding white
collar crime a highly profitable form of criminal involvement.
One
of the implications of this was investment in a powerful criminal tax
prosecutive option within the Attorney General's prosecutive arsenal. In dealing
with white collar crime whichfollowed in the wake of organizedcrime, a mixof civil
and regulatory remedies, as well as criminal sanctions, were used.
The Arizona strategy is described in some detail. In broad it amounts to
"containment": "[organized crime] is not an identifiable group of people or
organizations but a pattern of antisocial response to be everlastingly contained like
weeds in a field. No one questions the necessity of a continuing effort against
undesirable growths that threaten
our
food supplies; antisocial group behaviour
calls for a very similar form of systematic attention." Among other things,
containment means recognizing that random enforcement can be
counterproductive:
Is an agency successful, for example, if it gives priority to prosecuting and convicting the leader of
local gambling enterprise, if by doing so it opens the way to a national syndicate takeover that introduces
more problematic activities? (p 6)
In addition to the material on control strategy, there is a quite interesting
descriptive account of some of the leading forms of organized crime in Arizona -
the Mafia, motorcycle gangs and prison gangs such as the Mexican Mafia and the
Aryan Brotherhood.
There is no systematic evaluation of the Arizona project, and no strong
conclusions are reached about mistakes that were made. Rather, the book limits
itself to outlining the rationale for the strategy and describing that strategy. This
nevertheless makes it a very valuable documentation for practitioners of organized
crime control.
Canberra
JOHN
BRAITHWAITE
America's Crime Problem: An Introduction to Criminology, Joseph F Sheley,
Wadsworth Publishing Co (1985) 352 pp.
This is a revised edition of the author's earlier book, Understanding Crime. The
major aim of this text book is to help the reader "develop a critical approach to all
they hear and read about crime". Sheley begins with three questions:
1What are the nature and scope of the problem at hand (that is how accurate
are the assumptions and figures relating to the problem)?
2 Will the proposed remedy actually aid in solving the problem?
3What incidental side effects may accompany implementation of the
proposed remedy?
In the first five chapters the author describes how America's crime problem is
perceived, how fear of crime is created, how certain crimes such as violence receive
exaggerated publicity, and what the statistics say. In doing so the author makes use
of official statistics, surveys of criminal victimization and hidden delinquency. In
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