Word: underworlds
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...customary to deplore the "accommodation" that the underworld reaches, sometimes, with the forces of law and order, with the police, with the prosecutors, with the courts. Undoubtedly there is corruption of public officials, bad not only because it frustrates justice but also because it lowers standards of morality among the public officials. On the other hand, officials concerned with law enforcement are in the front line of diplomacy between the legitimate world and the underworld...
...good many economic and business principles that operate in the "upperworld" must, with suitable modification for change in environment, operate in the underworld as well, just as a good many economic principles that operate in an advanced competitive economy operate as well in a socialist or a primitive economy...
...addition to sheer curiosity there are good policy reasons for encouraging a "strategic" analysis of the criminal underworld, an analysis that might draw on modern economics and business administration. Such an analysis, in contrast to "tactical" intelligence aimed at the apprehension of individual criminals, could help in identifying the incentives and the limitations that apply to organized crime, in evaluating the costs and losses and in restructuring laws and programs to minimize the costs, wastes and injustices that crime entails...
...strategic question is whether a few "core" criminal markets provide the organizational stimulus for organized crime. If the answer turns out to be yes, then a critical question is whether the particular market so essential for the "economic development" of the underworld, and the emergence of organized crime, is one of the black markets dependent on "protection" against legitimate competition or instead is an inherently criminal activity. This question is critical because black markets always offer, in principle, the option of restructuring the market, or increasing competition as well as reducing it, of compromising the original prohibition in the larger...
...organization" of crime--the one about "internalizing" some of the costs that fall on the under-world itself but go unnoticed, or ignored, if criminal activity is decentralized. The individual hijacker may be tempted to kill a truck driver to destroy a potential witness, to the dismay of the underworld, which suffers from public outrage and the hightened activity of the police. A monopoly or a trade association could impose discipline. This is not a decisive argument, nor does it apply to all criminal industries if it applies to a few; but it is important...