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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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I'd really imagine it's just that much of crime is directly or indirectly connected to organized crime and the culture created by the prominence of organized crime in a community, and organized crime, by its nature (ie. its main point is usually the provision of contraband goods or services, often by smuggling e.g. drugs or bringing in prostitutes from some other country), tends to be one field of business where recent immigrants arriving in large-scale, tight-knit communities from poorer and less-well put together countries than the new host country tend to have a leg up, compared to more established groups.

This may have been the case for the Chinese, where a lot of the murders were tong related or otherwise financially motivated, but with the Italians and Irish the great majority were things like drunken fighting, disputes over women, avenging personal slights, etc. I don't know if the presence or absence of organized crime would significantly impact things like that.

I dunno? I'd imagine that having one's neighborhood's culture be defined and steered by the presence of organized crime would increase the general tendency to settle disputes with extralegal violence, and I'd even imagine some gang crime might be reported to the police as disputes over women, personal slights etc. so as to have less chance of affecting the organization.