Protection racket

A protection racket is an extortion scheme whereby a criminal group or individual coerces other less powerful entities to pay money, allegedly for protection services against external threats (usually violence or property damage). Many racketeers will coerce potential clients into buying protection through property damage or other harassment. In most cases, the racketeers do little to protect the client from other predators, and their "protection" is little more than extortion.

Types of protection

In other cases, the racketeers will warn other criminals that the client is under their protection and that they will punish anyone who harms the client. Services that the racketeers may offer may include the recovery of stolen property or punishing vandals. The racketeers may even advance the interests of the client, such as muscling out unprotected competitors.

Protection from theft and vandalism is one service the racketeer may offer. For instance, in Sicily, mafiosi know all the thieves and fences in their territory, and can track down stolen goods and punish thieves who dare to attack their clients.

Protection racketeers prefer to enter into indefinitely long bonds with their clients. This allows the racketeers to publicly declare a client to be under their protection. Thus, thieves and other predators will have little confusion as to who is and isn't protected.

Protection racketeers are not necessarily defined as criminals either. In "A Short History of Progress," Ronald Wright notes on p.49, "The warrior caste, supposedly society's protectors, often become protection racketeers. In times of war or crisis, power is easily stolen from the many by the few on a promise of security. The more elusive or imaginary the foe, the better for manufacturing consent."

The term has been expanded by feminists to refer to men who 'rescue' women by insisting on protecting them from dangerous strangers when it is actually the so-called protector who will turn on the woman who rejects his protection and deprives him of his excuse for violence. Susan Griffin was one of the first feminists to put this into words, in her 1971 article in Ramparts. More recently, Ellen Goodman noted (www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/04/14/a_less_than_manly_scam/) that this analogy can be extended to the current U.S. executive, where preemptive violence provokes blowback that tends to affect women and children most. And Susan Faludi goes into more detail in her most recent book, "The Terror Dream."

Territorial monopolies

A protection racketeer cannot tolerate competition within his sphere of influence from another racketeer. If a dispute erupted between two clients (e.g. businessmen competing for a construction contract) who are protected by rival racketeers, the two racketeers would have to fight each other to win the dispute for their respective clients. The outcomes of such fights can be unpredictable, and neither racketeer would be able to guarantee a victory for his client. This would make their protection unreliable and of little value; their clients would likely dismiss them and settle the dispute by other means. Therefore, racketeers negotiate territories in which they can monopolize the use of violence in settling disputes. These territories may be geographical, or they may be a certain type of business or form of transaction.

Payments

The protection money is typically collected by a "bag man". Although the organization might be particularly coercive in obtaining protection money, it is usually careful to shelter its "mark" from attacks by competitor organizations that similarly attempt to solicit or threaten the targeted individuals or businesses. Disputes between organizations concerning territory consequently arise from two competing organizations attempting to extort from the same "clients".

Legitimate businesses are not the only targets of protection racketeers. Criminals are also targeted. As criminals cannot turn to the law for help, they are more vulnerable. They may in fact willingly seek to buy protection. Since they cannot turn to the police when they are cheated or otherwise abused (e.g. a drug dealer is swindled by his supplier), they can instead rely on powerful gangsters to protect them.

Real-world examples

In Melbourne, Australia, Alphonse Gangitano ran a protection racket along the famous Lygon Street during the 1990s

In Sicily, Italy, it is estimated that around 80% of businesses of the city of Palermo pay pizzo, or protection money, to the Mafia. In Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, when the Mexican Drug War escalated in 2008, criminal groups saw their financial backbone threatened and began asking for racketeering money to businesses ranging from convenience stores to clubs and restaurants with the threat of burning down the business, kidnapping the owners or killing everyone inside with assault rifles. In the post-Soviet Russia, law enforcement was too underfunded and poorly trained to protect businesses and enforce contracts. Most businesses had to join a protection racket (known as a krysha, the Russian word for "roof") run by local gangsters. In the United Kingdom in the 1950s and 60s the Kray twins ran protection rackets in the East End of London.

See also

Extortion

FBI

Organized crime

Pizzo (extortion)

Racket (crime)

Revolutionary tax

References

Category:Extortion Category:Organized crime terminology