TEXT D
To understand the phenomenon of organised crime, it is necessary to study the social and economic background of the criminal. He is usually a product of a neighbourhood in which a low standard of living prevails. In many cases, he has been a member of a teenage gang with its code of loyalty and exclusive "turf" rights. As a result of the antisocial atmosphere that may prevail in certain neighbourhoods, the gangs would tend also to exhibit evidence of antisocial behaviour of one kind or another. Very often such activity would result in arrest and imprisonment, and the person involved would be well on his way to becoming an outlaw in the social sense. A sufficient number of arrests for minor offences can brand a person as a potential criminal for the rest of his life. Consequently, regular occupations may be denied to him, and he must content himself in legitimate society with a position that is regarded as inferior to others in terms of income and prestige. A reasonably intelligent and ambitious person would tend to become bitter under such circumstances and revert to the pattern of his boyhood group, which gave him a certain self respect.
Persons who enter careers in crime usually are also attracted by the income, or easy money, which they expect to gain and by the prestige as tough and cool manipulators which they can win in their in-group. Furthermore, the standards and values of the teenage gang from which the potential criminals come are often the same as those of an adult criminal conspiracy. This is the case when it comes to loyalty to the leader and the gang. Finally, criminals have shown willingness in the past to take care of their own by providing help for the families of those unfortunate cronies who have been jailed or killed in action. All these incentives combined with the social and economic factors mentioned above contribute toward the personnel and leadership of organised crime.
The great dividing line of the activity of organised crime in the US was the year when the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the sale of liquor was passed. Although certain pressure groups succeeded in having laws enacted against drinking, the social habits of the American people could not be regulated that easily. The demand for liquor remained, and organised crime supplied illegitimately what had been legally provided previously. Crime and violence reached an unprecedented degree until the hoodlums decided to co-operate with each other to a certain extent. After the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, the illegal production of liquor became negligible by comparison to the volume supplied by gangsters during the era of Prohibition.
To make up for the income that was lost as a result of the repeal of Prohibition, organised crime turned to gambling. The same sociological pattern is evident in gambling as in the case of drinking: the American public could not be stopped from gambling by laws. Criminals organised various gambling activities, sometimes on a nationwide scale. turnover of business due to illegal gambling has been estimated at anywhere from 22 to 50 billion dollars a year.
Certain other types of illegitimate activity are also rich sources of income for organised crime. One of these is the handling and reselling of stolen goods, and another is trade in pornographic literature. Although the turnover of business in the first case might be extremely large, it is not clear whether the involvement of organised crime in the latter trade is too great. Unfortunately, the evidence in both instances has not been collected to a sufficient degree to warrant special treatment here.
We can learn from the passage that______.