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IMMIGRATION
LAW
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 Organized Crime One of the toughest laws that is often abused by the government is RICO. Congress enacted the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) as part of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. In enacting RICO, Congress was responding to illicit activities such as gambling, loansharking, narcotics trafficking, and violent crime. Congress was principally concerned with the enormous profits generated by organized crime and its infiltration into legitimate business enterprises. Congress declared that its purpose was to seek the eradication of organized crime in the United States by strengthening the legal tools in the evidence-gathering process, by establishing new penal prohibitions, and by providing enhanced sanctions and new remedies to deal with the unlawful activities of those engaged in organized crime. The statement of findings and purpose that prefaces the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. Congress declared that: (1) organized crime is a highly sophisticated and widespread activity that annually drains billions of dollars from the economy by illegal means; (2) organized crime derives a major portion of its power through money obtained from such illegal activities; (3) this money and power are increasingly used to infiltrate and to corrupt legitimate businesses and labor unions and corrupt the democratic processes; (4) organized crime activities undermine the Nation's economic system and the general welfare of the Nation and its citizens; and (5) the problem of organized crime continues to grow because defects in the evidence-gathering process inhibit the development of legally admissible evidence necessary to bring criminal and other sanctions or remedies to bear on those involved in criminal activity since the sanctions and remedies available to the Government are unnecessarily limited in scope. Passage of RICO represented the realization that in order to wage a successful assault on traditional organized crime, the focus needed to shift away from individual prosecutions to dismantling the organizational foundations that allowed criminal conspiracies to flourish. Individual prosecutions had clearly proven ineffective in thwarting organized crime. As soon as one crime boss was arrested and prosecuted, a new leader moved in behind him to take his place. However, for many years after the passage of RICO, the law was not used. It was as though the law had been abandoned. Then, one prosecutor pushed to use the law. Since the law was so tough and multi-faceted, it became popular and pretty soon the law was being used all over the nation. Congress sought to alter this dynamic dramatically through the enactment of RICO. Under RICO, emphasis is placed on "enterprise criminality" as the central focus of the criminal prosecution. Although individuals are obviously still prosecuted, the ultimate objective of RICO is to dismantle the criminal organization. Moreover, the existence and utilization of an enterprise to facilitate proscribed conduct triggers the application of enhanced sanctions, civil remedies, and procedures set forth in RICO statute. RICO also significantly expanded traditional conspiracy law. The RICO enterprise is the linchpin for joinder, in a single prosecution of multiple defendants charged with diverse crimes committed in furtherance of the criminal enterprise.n8 RICO eases the problem of proving a single agreement or common objective when unrelated individuals are engaged in highly diversified criminal activity. Rather than prosecuting each defendant separately for crimes committed on behalf of the criminal enterprise, or charging multiple smaller conspiracies separately because of the inability to establish a single criminal agreement, RICO permits joinder of multiple defendants engaged in the commission of multi-faceted crimes based on the concept of "enterprise criminality." Tëëhrough RICO, Congress intended to authorize the single prosecution of a multi-faceted, diversified conspiracy by replacing the inadequate 'wheel' and 'chain' rationales with a new statutory concept: the enterprise.
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