US Crime Statutes
I will be examining the following three crime statues and their impacts: The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Statute, the USA Patriot Act, and the Bank Secrecy Act.
The RICO statute was extremely important in the history of organized crime because it allowed the government to prosecute entire criminal organizations instead of being limited to prosecuting individuals for specific crimes. The RICO statutes made it so that anyone involved in a criminal organization could be subject to prosecution even if they were not caught for a specific crime themselves. It’s a very broad law that today is used by both criminal and civil courts in order to prosecute both legal and criminal enterprises. Originally however, it was created as a way to go after the mafia. In order to violate RICO there are 35 offences which have been listed out in the law which, if connected through a certain enterprise, constitute “predicate offences”. These offences range from racketeering to mail and wire fraud. In order to charge an organization under RICO two of these predicate charges must have been committed through that enterprise within 10 years. Keep in mind that this enterprise must exist and be identifiable, as RICO can only have authority when dealing with an organization, not an individual. (Justia, 2019) The RICO act was instrumental in taking down the Carlo Gambino family, one of the most powerful families in the American Mafia.
The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001 had profound consequences to ordinary citizens. The law was imposed just weeks after 9/11 and was a drastic revision to United States surveillance laws which vastly expanded the government’s ability to spy on its own citizens in an attempt to identify potential organized terrorist cells. The law eliminated judicial oversight over these laws by removing the judicial branch’s authority to reject cases in which they believe the government is overstepping its surveillance powers. The law also expanded the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism and allowed the CIA to engage domestically within the United States which hasn’t been allowed since the 1970’s. The Patriot Act while sweeping in its removal of individual rights has not, according to the US Government’s own Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, prevented or even identified a single previously unknown terrorist threat. (ACLU, 2020) Because of this there are no specific examples I can identify which could illuminate how this statute has impacted organized crime groups even though the law was put in place specifically to identify and prosecute international terrorist organizations.
The final statute that I will discuss is the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). This law was aimed at preventing people from using the banks to hide and launder illegal money. The law required banks to provide records and documentations whenever someone comes in trying to make a transaction over $10,000 in cash. The law has been useful in providing banks the tools that they need in order to identify potential money laundering operations. This law has made money laundering much more difficult as one can no longer walk into a bank with bags full of cash and deposit them without the government being alerted. While it has not eliminated money laundering, it has made it much more difficult for large organized crime groups to move money from its cash form into its more spendable clean electronic form. (Kenton, 2020)
Citations:
Justia. (2019, June 03). Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Law. Retrieved November 23, 2020, from https://www.justia.com/criminal/docs/rico/
ACLU, Surveillance Under the USA/PATRIOT Act. (2020). Retrieved November 23, 2020, from https://www.aclu.org/other/surveillance-under-usapatriot-act
Kenton, W. (2020, August 29). Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). Retrieved November 23, 2020, from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bank_secrecy_act.asp