Criminal Patterns of Chinese Gangs (From Chinese Subculture and Criminality: Non-Traditional Crime Groups in America, P 103-118, 1990, Ko-lin Chin -- See NCJ-124245)

• NCJ Number: 124250
• Author(s): K Chin
• Date Published: 1990
• Length: 16 pages
• Sale Source: Greenwood Publishing Group
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Chinese gangs are involved in utilitarian money-making crimes such as protection, extortion, robbery, prostitution, and drug trafficking.

Abstract

Chinese gangs extort businesses and sell protection to gambling houses. The primary extortion techniques are to demand money explicitly or provide services and then indicate that money is expected. Types of extortion include money payments, free goods and services, or behavioral demands. Unlike protection and extortion activities that are sanctioned by the gang as a group, robberies are committed by individual gang members independently of the group. The extent of Chinese gang involvement in the operation of prostitution rings is not clear, but there is evidence that some of the gangs are at least providing protection for the massage parlors. Recently, Chinese gang members have begun to play an important role in the heroin business, but they tend to hire people who are not gang members. Drug enforcement authorities assume that gang leaders' involvement in heroin trafficking is not a group activity of the gangs. Violence is a characteristic of Chinese gangs, both within and between gangs.