Models of Organized Crime Executive Summary

There are two different types of organizations within organized crime and these organizations are called the bureaucratic and patron-client organizations. In this paper we will compare distinctions between the bureaucratic and patron-client organizations and this will include some similarities and differences between the main models of organized crime and why these models are important for understanding organized crime.

Bureaucratic organizations are formal and consist of regulations, rules, protocols, and procedures that will keep the lower ranked members from making decisions without administrative approval. This can be known as the red tape rule where the formal documentation must be processed by administration before any definite decision can be made. The patron-client organization the lower ranking members are allowed to take it upon themselves to obtain outside contacts, conduct business, outside resources without any approval as long as the organization is benefited by the decisions that are made on their part. This in turn could be why the members involved in bureaucratic organization blame failures and financial issues on the administration and the patron-client organization all the members are held accountable for success or failure of the organization.
The patron-client organization and bureaucratic organization are both popular techniques in the ordering of government or legitimate capitalistic enterprises. Bureaucratic organizations are a very big part of the United States examples would be state government, local government and all the other government agencies abroad. In organized crime it can be looked at as a benefit that imposing the organizational structure into an illegal enterprise and also by putting distance through human bodies and the bureaucratic position and the lower ranks. This is also a self-preserving mechanism since you want secrecy. Both the patron-client organization and the bureaucratic organization both want to make their organization look like a legitimate institution so they are not caught by the law.