Saturday, July 17, 2004
Author Paul Lunde explains why it continues to thrive everywhere.
By JOHN SMYNTEK
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
"Organized Crime," by Paul Lunde (DK Publishing, $30)
Criminal justice professors and history instructors: If you are offering a course on the history of organized crime or just how it all works, here is your textbook.
In "Organized Crime: An Inside Guide to the World's Most Successful Industry," Paul Lunde pretty much explains the dirty dealing of the world in all its shades and variations.
And there are plenty of those. Due to "The Godfather" films and "The Sopranos" TV series, mention the word "mob" and the widespread reaction is that it's largely an Italian entity.
Not so -- emphatically, not so.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Europe in general has become a major operating base, especially when it comes to human trafficking and prostitution. Two of the main centers are Albania, long a backward country that has quickly caught up with the world when it comes to criminal activity and innovation, and Romania, a center of credit card fraud, Lunde says.
Then there's the Russian mafiya, which is as ruthless as any of Joe Stalin's machinations, filling the dark void left by totalitarian communism. Further to the east, there are the Japanese yakuza and the Chinese triads.
In Africa, Nigeria is the underworld center and in South America, cocaine-producers Colombia, Peru and Bolivia keep crime's kettle bubbling.
Survival
In a book that is well-designed graphically, Lunde explains why organized crime thrives nearly everywhere.
Why? Organized crime is like a virus that constantly mutates to adapt to and sometime conquer whatever is fighting it. When Prohibition profits disappeared in the United States after repeal of the Volstead Act in the early 1930s, the American Mafia just cranked up its labor racketeering, prostitution, drugs and gambling operations to make up the difference and prosper.
Lunde also explains relatively complicated enterprises like money laundering and how street gangs and rogue motorcycle gangs are part of the mechanism.
Fascinating and informative, "Organized Crime" is a true but sad indictment of the human condition where evil triumphs at least part of the time.