Ask Lemmy

Yes. The answer for everyone is yes.

Organized crime is an interesting topic. In my opinion it's existence shows a disconnect of the needs of the people and their government/social structure. Every country has some amount of "organized crime". There is no exception. What does differ is the size, power, and wealth of the criminal syndicate.

The larger and more severe the disconnect between the people's needs and government, the more extensive and structured these criminal organizations become.

For example gangs often form in an regions where opportunity is limited or a group of people are being oppressed. Inner city gangs are a good example of this. They form as a form of protection and a chance for opportunity. These opportunities are usually supplying things that are illegal but still in demand.

If government bans or fails to provide something with a very high demand (like prohibition of alcohol in the U.S. and just about everything in the Soviet Union) the criminal organizations grow in wealth and sophistication.

The only effective way to stop these criminal organizations is fulfill the demand and provide other opportunities for the individuals. For example the U.S. legalized alcohol. This dramatically reduced income to criminal opportunity. Under FDR support structures, fair wages, education, and all sorts of opportunities were created (for whites). The opportunity for individual people through criminal activity declined and most of them left the criminal organizations. In darker skin colored groups where opportunity remained limited, criminal activity remained higher.

Organized crime can be dramatically reduced by providing opportunities to all individuals.

Alternatively a complete collapse and takeover by the criminal organizations like the Soviet Union to Russia is also a option.

Organized crime is in basically every single country in the world

When i was a teen, I had a bookie who was affiliated with a certain Italian-American civil rights organization.

In America, we have three kinds of organized crime. Executive, Legislative, and Judicial.

Doesn't every country have some degree of organised crime present?

Like they may not have glamorous crime families like the Mafia but wherever there's crime, there's organised crime groups.

The corporate mob(s) are the worst. But since we don't have anyone willing to take them down, the FBI has too much sand in it's mangina, we don't even get any takedowns.

Is there anywhere in the modern world that doesn't have organized crime? Just because people ain't being arrested for it doesn't necessarily mean they don't exist. It could mean they're not being caught or own the law.

I'm from Northern Ireland and many of the so-called "paramilitary" groups that used to be a part of the conflict here have shifted towards organised crime in the 21st century. It goes for both Republican and Loyalist groups. In fact, these days it's extremely rare for both sides to attack each other. They mostly have internal feuds with rival groups. It's moreso on the Loyalist side, though.

(Just in case anyone isn't aware, Republicans in this context are those who want a full 32 county Irish republic, while Loyalists are those who reject Irish unity and want NI to remain as part of the UK).

I have bad news:

If your government has "private sector" organized crime under control, they have simply taken over the organized crime. Society abhors a vacuum.

There is still some around here, but not like in the past, nobody was shaking us down for protection money in our little storefront (that used to happen in the same neighborhood) but a lot of the drugs still come through those organizations and there are still gangs around - there was a police standoff with a biker gang a few blocks from my house once, they shut down the streets.

I guess the US is too big and disorganized.

Now - LA in the early 1990s - I stayed there awhile and holy crap, anything people say about gangs during that time is true. The police were a big violent gang, the prisons had gang riots, I knew people in gangs even though it wasn't my world, it was widespread. So disorganized organized crime, there was a lot of that back then

I live in Japan so we have Yakuza (and I'm assuming a number of other crime orgs from China, HK, and more). The wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza does a good job of explaining.

Generally they have zero direct impact on my life. Generally the only time they'll mess with foreigners is through scams to get people into bars where they have crazy high prices, drug you, or both. Or, I guess, if you seek them out for some reason.

I'm from Italy, organised crime flourish where the state doesn't reach. Then they expand, just like corporations, infiltrating the political parties.

In Canada the entire construction industry is basically the mob. Has been for decades.

Organized crime exists everywhere. In the places that don't have a stereotyped reputation for it, the organized crime groups are either better at hiding or have more control over the local government and don't get investigated.

For instance, in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos internet scams are a significant portion of the economy. In Laos the scams revenue represent about 68% of their GDP:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/02/scam-state-multi-billion-dollar-industry-south-east-asia

Local governments have tried to crack down on the scam centers, but the operations are so large that basically everyone in the country is either involved directly, or knows someone personally who is.

“These are massive pieces of infrastructure, set up very publicly. You can go to borders and observe them. You can even walk into some of them,” says Tower. “The fact this is happening in a very public way shows just the extreme level of impunity – and the extent to which states are not only tolerating this, but actually, these criminal actors are becoming state embedded.”

The point being, most of the time there isn't a "crime family" like in movies and TV shows. Organized crime is business, and in a lot of places it's business as usual.

So a lot of people here are going to be very broad and not particular about corruption in the US.

I live in Hawaii, and what most people in the US experience is a more general, liberalized form of corruption; a corruption which is more baked into the process and acceptable. Corruption as law, as process; formalized and legal.

However, in Hawaii, we have a very, very different form of corruption. Bags of cash getting handed to legislatures. You can't get a permit for construction in less than a year unless you bribe someone. The sheriff in Maui was thinking they like be walter white and control all crime syndicates in the county. Web of bribery extending throughout the state house with rumors it goes all the way to Governor Josh green.

So we end up with lots of underground/ "illegal" activity. Underground like, fell neighbor to neighbor, just gotta know, type thing. Get one game room, some thing fell offa truck. local kine shit.

I live in a first world country so we have legal organised crime and illegal organised crime.

How much press an organization gets does not necessarily correspond to how big it is. Obviously, Africa has a certain crime rate, but whatever bandit gang doesn't have the same PR.

In the case of the Irish, mass immigration to America followed by few opportunities once there. I'm not sure how much they did in Ireland itself; probably not nothing, but probably not as much. In the case of southern Italy, what you'll read is that the political instability and weak authorities had something to do with it. Like, the Cosa Nostra functioned more like warlords than your typical criminal organisation, at points.

The Yakuza will tell you they have a direct link to the samurais, but you should believe that about as much as if the 'Ndrangheta told you they were knights. Are they, or do they just figure that will earn them more recruits?

In the US we have a type of organized crime run by health insurance companies.

Corporations like United Healthcare charge huge monthly premiums then consistently refuse up to 30% of valid claims. They make the appeals process so difficult and time consuming most people never successfully appeal a denial. These companies routinely murder thousands of people each year for money, but since they pay off our lawmakers there are zero repercussions and they're free to continue their murderous activities year after year.

The only difference between this and any other type of organized crime is the profits are legal due to those payoffs, and in part thanks to Citizen's United and our crooked SCOTUS justices.

There's a long standing rumor where I live that the Hell's Angels own a bunch of infrastructure stuff like vehicle registries. I dunno of that's true or not though.

Also a suspicious amount of old buildings that are protected for historical reasons seem to catch fire right after being bought for development.