Organized Crime and the Correctional Process

Abstract

The inclusion of rehabilitation of the criminal as an essential element in penal discipline has been widely urged and to some extent has been successful, but many correctional administrators and officers occasionally fail to comprehend the seriousness of the organized crime problem. In some instances, parole authorities have overlooked a racketeer's past activities and have been influ enced instead by his affable personality or good behavior in prison. In other instances, wardens, anxious to maintain an orderly institution, have allowed the racketeer-inmate special privileges. Often, too, sentencing procedure has, by its very severity, invited the court's leniency or circumvention of the law. It is important to maintain and improve our correctional proc esses with the amenable prisoner in the hope of returning him to a law-abiding life, but when we flinch from the task of appre hending, convicting, sentencing, and disciplining the racketeer, we concede victory to organized crime. Several examples are pro vided to illustrate the ways in which parole boards, correctional administrators, judges, and officers have succeeded or failed in coping with the racketeer.