Government and organized crime: history of co-existence

According to history, ancient civilizations like Summer, Indus Valley Civilization, Babylon, Maya Civilization, Yellow River, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, and Ancient Rome had governments, military, Laws, and crimes. The Summer Civilization had the first ever written code of Law, and it was written by the ruler Urukagina who was best known for his reforms to combat corruption. Later King Ur-Nammu wrote "the Code of Ur-Nammu", which is oldest surviving code of Law in the world. His code of Law is considered remarkably advanced, and the capital crimes of murder, robbery, adultery and rape were punished with death.

	Government and organized crime: history of co-existence
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Many people mostly historians believe that organized crime emerged from piracy and banditry in 17th century or from some famous warriors and conquers earlier, however, if we look at this ancient Laws, we can see that organized crime and crime generally existed long before piracy and banditry period, even Julius Cesar was kidnapped and held prisoner in 75BC by Cilician pirates, he was later released when requested ransom was paid. Afterwards, Cesar raised fleet and captured the pirates, pirates was first imprisoned and later crucified on his authority.

Pertinent historical question: so, what was formed first and what did set up the model for other; a government or organized crime?

It is evident that crime and organized crime existed long before the formation of the first government. Governments implemented Laws because of the crime activities that were visible in their society, in relation to that; we can say that crime is older than the first Law and government. If tree of more individuals organize them self's to commit a crime, that crime is characterized as organized crime.

It was very hard, for example, in Twenty-fourth Century BC to distinguish between what was right and what was wrong, however, people held something deep inside of themselves for centuries of human evolution, and that is the sense for righteousness on which civilizations were able to build their respective society.

Did governments learned from organized crime or did organized crime learned from governments?

They learned from each other, government's establishers applied some of the main principles of criminal organizations structure for the greater cause. In fact, many Laws and Government bodies were made because of crime activities. Criminal organizations followed the evolution of governments and learned to be more effective in criminal activities.

Throughout history crime walked along governments, it was present in every known society, including dynasties, imperialism, colonialism, monarchism, communism, socialism, and modern democracy. In the contemporary world criminal organizations are still successful in their business. Some governments, on the other hand, cannot be distinguished from organized crime because of their inherent corruption and lawlessness in their activities.

Today, many world governments, the United Nations and various law enforcement agencies are fighting criminal organizations and corruption, but as long as we have politicians and government official behaving like criminals and taking bribes, criminal organizations will continue to grow.

Ivan Simic
Belgrade, Serbia

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