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Prohibition, Enforcement, and Border Politics: Debating Vice at the National Level

Holly M. Karibo

in Sin City North: Sex, Drugs, and Citizenship in the Detroit-Windsor Borderland

Local anti-vice efforts were also shaped in important ways by broader national debates. This chapter examines how the problem of cross-border vice along the nations’ borders was framed by the media, ... More

Local anti-vice efforts were also shaped in important ways by broader national debates. This chapter examines how the problem of cross-border vice along the nations’ borders was framed by the media, lawmakers, and government officials working at the federal level. By examining senate committee investigations that took place in Canada and the US in 1955, this chapter argues that federal officials were united by a similar belief in a prohibitionist ideology, one that emphasized the need to enforce a clear line between acceptable and unacceptable drug use through legal means. Within this prohibitionist framework, federal officials perpetuated racial stereotypes that linked cross-border smuggling with Chinese Communists, Mexican migrants, and European traffickers. While officials along the US-Canada border attempted to portray a united front in their efforts to eliminate trafficking, blaming the drug problem on outsiders often undermined their ability to maintain congenial diplomatic relations. The focus on drug prohibition along the border, then, also came to embody some of the diplomatic tensions that were developing between the US and Canada in the postwar year, tensions that would ultimately affect anti-vice efforts in cities closest to the nations’ borders.Less

Oligarchs, the Partial Reform Equilibrium, and the Euromaidan Revolution

Taras Kuzio

in Beyond the Euromaidan: Comparative Perspectives on Advancing Reform in Ukraine

In contrast to many other scholars, Taras Kuzio shows how the corruption, shadow economy, and organized crime that plague Ukraine today emerged in the late Soviet period and then took advantage of ... More

In contrast to many other scholars, Taras Kuzio shows how the corruption, shadow economy, and organized crime that plague Ukraine today emerged in the late Soviet period and then took advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Through a detailed analysis of oligarchs’ roles in a wide range of enterprises, he shows empirically how corruption works at the micro-level. He also shows why the foundations of the Donetsk group in organized crime networks prepared it to outcompete the Dnipropetrovsk oligarchs for power in post-Soviet Ukraine. Kuzio’s chapter leaves it clear that the current patterns of “non-reform” that we see in Ukraine are deeply entrenched and resistant to change. While the 2014 revolution opened space for reform, many actors are striving to take advantage of the current turmoil to gain control over economic assets.Less

When Scarface Met Rico

Joe Kraus

in The Kosher Capones: A History of Chicago's Jewish Gangsters

This chapter traces the waning of Patrick’s career and that of the Outfit as law enforcement was closing in. It discusses the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statutes, which was ... More

This chapter traces the waning of Patrick’s career and that of the Outfit as law enforcement was closing in. It discusses the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statutes, which was part of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. RICO expressly spelled out the capacity to target individuals for being part of a criminal organization. It expanded the existing power to bring conspiracy charges against criminal organizations. Under conspiracy, everyone involved had to be aware of the shared goal of the operation, and the group was defined by its participation in a particular crime. Under RICO, it became possible to convict someone who was part of an organization engaged in a pattern of illegal activity even if some members of the organization were unaware of specific actions or even of the ultimate goal of those actions.Less

Income Tax Evasion, Medicare Fraud, Organized Crime, Environmental Disputes, and Bankruptcy

James M. Denham

in Fifty Years of Justice: A History of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida

The chapter deals with income tax evasion, including beginning discussion of the high-profile Wesley Snipes prosecution. The chapter then turns to Medicare fraud prosecutions. The changing nature of ... More

The chapter deals with income tax evasion, including beginning discussion of the high-profile Wesley Snipes prosecution. The chapter then turns to Medicare fraud prosecutions. The changing nature of organized crime activity in Florida is the next subject covered in the chapter. The employment of “crews” and how they were prosecuted in the Middle District is included. Next the chapter turns to environment disputes, especially plaintiffs’ actions against large-scale developments considered to be outside federal guidelines. Issues such as manatee protection, protecting wetlands, and massive developments that violated existing rules and generally threatened the environment were often before federal judges. Middle District judges adjudicated endangered species questions as well. Finally the chapter turns to bankruptcy in the Middle District Court from 2000 to the present and a number of new additions to the Bankruptcy bar are featured.Less

The U.S. Middle District of Florida, First Years, 1962–1968

James M. Denham

in Fifty Years of Justice: A History of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida

This chapter covers the U.S. Middle District of Florida from its creation when it was carved out of the U.S. Southern District of Florida in 1962 to 1968. The first judges, U.S. attorney, U.S. ... More

This chapter covers the U.S. Middle District of Florida from its creation when it was carved out of the U.S. Southern District of Florida in 1962 to 1968. The first judges, U.S. attorney, U.S. Marshal, and other offices and their officers are covered. Pertinent issues of the time during the Kennedy-Johnson years, such as Civil Rights, the War on Poverty, the Cold War, the Vietnam War are covered within the context of enforcing and adjudication federal law in Florida. Thorough coverage of the U.S. Attorney’s office, its personnel, and the types of crimes they prosecuted during these years is included. The courthouse staffs in Jacksonville, Tampa, and Orlando (permanently established during those years) is covered. Attention is also given to the daily regimen of the judges, types of cases they handled, court loads, and also some of the more prominent visiting judges are covered.Less

The Politics of Immanence

Karina Biondi

John F. Collins (ed.)

in Sharing This Walk: An Ethnography of Prison Life in Brazil

This chapter presents the micropolitics that support the existence of the First Command of Capital (Primeiro Comando da Capital - PCC). These micropolitics includes projects, manipulative efforts, ... More

This chapter presents the micropolitics that support the existence of the First Command of Capital (Primeiro Comando da Capital - PCC). These micropolitics includes projects, manipulative efforts, strategies, but also improvisations, unexpected and random possibilities. The ethnography of these practices reveals that those who participate in PCC arrive at their destinations not because of the organization of the PCC, but because of their "dispositions". The dynamic that emanates from these dispositions bears remarkable difference to more standard concepts of "organized crime" or "criminal organization". The role of the PCC, even though it includes baskets of strategies and projects, is permeated instead by chance and is made real and powerful by the dispositions of its participants, who make do in relation to that chance.Less

Spinning Sand into Gold

Andrew W. Kahrl

in Land Was Ours: How Black Beaches Became White Wealth in the Coastal South

Black beaches proliferated across the coastal South in the 1940s and 1950s and became thriving centers of black leisure and entertainment and incubators of post-World War II black popular music and ... More

Black beaches proliferated across the coastal South in the 1940s and 1950s and became thriving centers of black leisure and entertainment and incubators of post-World War II black popular music and culture. The chapter tells the history of Carr’s and Sparrow’s Beaches in Annapolis, Maryland, and Bay Shore Beach in Hampton, Virginia, which became two of the most prominent black-owned beaches, performance venues, and amusement parks in the mid-Atlantic South. It traces the rapid growth and commercial success of black beaches and amusement parks in the years following World War II, when these venues attracted large crowds and hosted popular black musicians and performers on the “chitlin circuit.” It explores the deep and murky financial ties between black-owned leisure enterprises and operators of illicit urban economies. It shows how black beaches spawned a wide range of related business ventures (including, nightclubs, hotels, restaurants, and carnivals), opened new opportunities for African Americans in security and law enforcement, and facilitated the emergence of some of the era’s most popular black musicians and performers.Less

Conclusion

Karina Biondi

John F. Collins (ed.)

in Sharing This Walk: An Ethnography of Prison Life in Brazil

The expansion of the First Command of the Capital (PCC), making it the most powerful criminal network in Brazil, happened after the addition of “Equality” to its “ideals”. This incorporation provoked ... More

The expansion of the First Command of the Capital (PCC), making it the most powerful criminal network in Brazil, happened after the addition of “Equality” to its “ideals”. This incorporation provoked a series of mechanisms and strategies to produce a “Command” between “equals”, nourishing a tension that infiltrates and spreads out across all the political dimensions of the PCC. This chapter examines the diverse plans through whichPCC politics operates. One of these plans mentions the PCC as transcendence, something that only exists because of their immanent forces. This approach reflects an immanentist anthropology on a transcendent construction, an anthropology that permits one to think about transcendence without imagining that it pre-exists. This PCC-as-transcendence, produced in the immanence and mixed to it, results on a decentered, non-hierarchical social formation. The PCC is thus presented as a creative social formation that challenges the concept of organized crime and offers another approach to the notion of the prison gang.Less