The Gig Mafia

CHAPTER 6

Traditional Organized Crime (e.g., Mafia)

Traditionally, organized crime (e.g., the mafia or cosa nostra) was comprised of an opportunistic crime syndicate (Hortis and Jacobs 2014, 180). In a sense it still is, like white-collar crime and street crimes generally. Specifically, organized economic crime exploits pre existing opportunity structures where the rewards are likely and worthwhile, and the risks are practicably ignorable. This is the traditional perspective of organized crime groups strategically exploiting existing opportunities through fairly rigid top-down structures of command-and-control. In this sense, it resembles many legitimate commercial entities.

However, there are competing theories (cf. the emergent perspective ...