racketeering
In 1970, Congress passed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (US Code-Title 18), or RICO, to provide a powerful tool in the fight against organized crime. Since the mid-1980's, the RICO Act has been applied in circumstances that many believe to be beyond the scope of the act. The RICO Act enables persons financially injured by a pattern of criminal activity to bring a RICO claim in state and federal court, and to obtain damages three times the amount of their actual harm, plus attorneys fees and costs (www.ricoact.com). According to some observers, RICO is the most sweeping statue passed by Congress that attacks the continuity required for organized crime activities (Local Prosecution of Organized Crime). RICO defines racketeering in an extremely broad manner, which continually causes problems. It includes many offenses that do not ordinarily violate any federal statute. "Any act or threat involving murder, kidnapping, gambling, arson, robbery, bribery, extortion or dealing in narcotic or other dangerous drugs, which is chargeable under state law and punishable by imprisonment for more that one year." In addition there is a laundry list of federal offenses that are defined as racketeering including, but not li
At one point in time there were those in the government, that had good intentions with this statue. They were those government officials that had a true interest in trying to ameliorate the United States. However, those in the government whom have realized how monetarily beneficial it has become with the use of RICO, are now severely abusing this statue for their own obvious reasons. Due to this fact, it is impacting a large scale of our society in a very negative manner. Unfortunately with this statue they are concocting crimes and giving the public a mistaken impression of serial progression concerning RICO, while they are basking in their newly accomplished wealth. One can not create a crime in order to catch a criminal. Entrapment from the FBI is a crime. I question who is the true criminal. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Congress' reaction to organized crime, RICO, was similar to the "red scares" of the 1950s. The result was that Congress overreacted to the problem and mistakenly created a statute that was overly broad. RICO was not created to apply only to organized crime in the classic 'mobster' sense. In its deliberations Congress recognized that it would be difficult to limit RICO to traditional crime such as La Cosa Nostra when they obtained a stranglehold on the infrastructure of New York City and held it for much of this century. For the government, self-diminishing tendencies have been easily forgotten in their intoxication with personal growth. This became very apparent in my research. Under RICO, an enterprise can be a legitimate or wholly illegitimate organization or any group of individuals associated in fact. A pattern of racketeering activity wa
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1164
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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