Organized crime is better organized than it has ever been before and it is growing at such a pace that it constitutes a major threat to American society and to free societies all over the world. Understanding the facts about the new nature of organized crime has come about very slowly. Only a short time ago the end of the American Mafia was being predicted as various new groups were believed to be taking its place. In 1991 Robert Mueller, a U.S. Assistant Attorney General, testifying before Congress said that America would not repeat the mistake made with the growth of the Mafia -- "we cannot stand idly by while newer organized crime groups invade our society" (quoted by Sterling 150). But it has become increasingly clear in the 1990s that the old-fashioned crime syndicate has gained new life and flourishes as it never has before with mutual support from the new strains of organized crime. As Sterling said in 1994, a government stand against crime was too late because American society had "already been invaded, by the same forces advancing on Europe, working both continents as one" (150).
The revamped and the new organizations flourish, however, with a new sophistication in terms of organization and the technology they employ. This sophistication, combined with an increase in the degree of violence used, makes organized crime deadlier than ever before as it stretches out to become a genuinely global phenomenon. Since the fall of the Soviet Union the emergence of a vast new network of Russian crime syndicates has speeded up the process of uniting organized criminal groups around the world. The combination of the Sicilian Mafia, the American Mafia, the Colombian drug cartels, the Russian syndicates, the Chinese Triads and the Japanese Yakuza is now operating as a loosely unified system.
As an informant from the Sicilian Mafia testified, the Colombian cartels and the Italian Mafia had held a summit meeting in 1987 which Ju...