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Social Institutions

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Criminal organizations have been in America for a very long time, in order to get a clear understanding on how criminals think you have to take a closer look on how more legal organizations operate. One way to look at criminal organizations would be to compare them to social institutions. A social institution on defined as a group of people who get together with a common purpose. Some social organizations are Lions club, Veterans of foreign wars, Shiners, and even the Boy Scouts. A criminal organizations is also a group of people that get together with a common purpose, this purpose would be committing crime. Both Social Institutions and criminal organizations are managed by one person who makes all the decisions. The big difference between the two is that social institutions are legal in nature with criminal organizations or illegal.
Organized crime is a business like any other legal business. They both have structure and the general purpose is the same, to make money. A criminal organizations in general makes moneys with little to no overhead because they do not buys their product and resale it. Criminal organizations steal most of their product. A legal business produces or purchases their goods for resale. This is one of the major differences between social institutions and criminal organizations. There is evidence showing that criminal organizations so a patterns of networking to grow their business, A partnership, or a patron-client relationship (Lyman, 2007). Once again these are very similar on how legal businesses are operated. Criminal organizations also operate in a very hostile environment. A legal social institution work in harmony with to achieve the same goal as a criminal organization (Lyman, 2007).
In retrospect both criminal organizations and social institutions are very similar in nature. Both of them have the same goals and purposes other than the fact that criminal organization operate in an illegal fashion.

Reference
Lyman, M. (2007). Theories of Organized Criminal Behavior. Retrieved from http://wps.pearsoncustom.com/wps/media/objects/6904/7070214/CRJ455_Ch02.pdf

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