NCJ Number
151020
Date Published
1994
Length
16 pages
Annotation
The most important type of criminality organized by the state consists of acts defined by law as criminal and committed by state officials in the pursuit of their jobs as state representatives; examples include state complicity in piracy, smuggling, assassination, and criminal conspiracies.
Abstract
State-organized crime normally does not include criminal acts that benefit only individual officeholders, such as the acceptance of bribes or the illegal use of violence by the police against individuals. Smuggling occurs when a government has successfully cornered the market on a commodity or when it seeks to keep a commodity of another nation from crossing its borders. States are frequently involved in organized drug and arms smuggling activities, and links of the U.S. Government to such activities are examined, particularly during the Vietnam War and the 1980's with the Iran-Contra affair. The role of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, the Defense Department, and the State Department in drug and arms smuggling, money laundering, assassination, and other criminal activities is addressed. The author concludes that some types of state agencies are more prone to engage in criminality than others and that important parallels exist between state-organized criminality and the criminality of police and law enforcement agencies generally. 34 references