Short Essay on Society and Crime

Society supports or tolerates many types of organised crime indirectly, if not directly. It has been persuasively argued that organised crime is the result of the particular structure of our society. Donald Taft (1964) has said that the motives for organised crime are largely the same as those valued so highly in the free enterprise system.

Organised crime, like legitimate business, attempts to achieve maximum returns with a minimum of expenditure through efficient organisation and skilled staff. The difference is that legitimate business operates within the law and organised crime operates outside the law.

Lindesmith has forcefully pointed out that factors like indifference to public affairs, general disregard for law, profit-motivated economics, and questionable political practices produce a fertile place for organised crime. People in society also tolerate this crime because it gratifies many of their needs.

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The claim of the people and the law-enforcement officials that they try to prohibit illegal practices is nothing but hypocrisy and self-deception.

Robert Woetzel (1963: 8) has described the co-existence of law and lawlessness as follows: “The vast majority of people today would like to have their proverbial cake and eat it too, by theoretically affirming values which they hold dear and at the same time reserving for themselves a certain leeway in realising wishes which may not always correspond to these values.

As a result, law and a high degree of lawlessness exist side by side, and moralists and gangsters complement each other. It is this situation as well as the toleration of illegal services which act as a serious handicap in the control and prevention of organised crime.

The public demands action sporadically as intermittent, sensational disclosures (like sugar scandal, fodder scandal) reveals corruption caused by organised crime.

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Without sustained public pressure, law enforcement officers and politicians have little incentive to address themselves to combating organised crime. So long political corruption exists in the country (which in India has now assumed scandalous proportions), a drive against organised crime will have no meaning.

The vicious circle perpetuates itself. Corrupt politicians will not act unless the public so demands; the public will not insist for action till it gets the required services provided by organised crime; and the police will not take prevention seriously till it gets its due share.”