Crime organizations
Perhaps the best known criminal organizations are the Sicilian and American Cosa Nostra, most commonly known as the Mafia.
The Neopolitan Camorra, the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta, and the Apulian Sacra Corona Unita are similar Italian organized crime groups.
Other organized crime groups include, the Russian mafia, the Japanese Yakuza, Mexican Drug Cartels, Colombian Drug Cartels, the Irish Mob, the Indian Mafia, the Chinese Triads and Tong, the Jewish Mafia, British Crime Syndicates, the Albanian Mafia, Jamaican Yardies or Posses, Nigerian Organized Crime and other Eastern European crime syndicates. On a lower level in the criminal food chain are many street gangs, such as the Bloods and the Crips.
- The Mafia (also known as Cosa Nostra) is a Sicilian criminal secret society which is believed to have first developed in the mid-19th century in Sicily.
- The Camorra is a mafia-like criminal organisation, or secret society, in the region of Campania and the city of Naples in Italy.
- ‘Ndrangheta is one of the most powerful and violent organized crime organizations in Italy.
- Sacra Corona Unita, (SCU) or United Sacred Crown, is a Mafia-like criminal organization from Apulia (in Italian Puglia) region in Southern Italy, and is especially active in the areas of Brindisi and Lecce and not, as people tend to believe, in the region as a whole.
- The Russian Mafia (Русская мафия, Russkaya Mafiya), Red Mafia (Красная мафия, Krasnaya Mafiya) or Bratva (Братва; slang for ‘brotherhood’), is a name given to a broad group of organized criminals in the former Soviet Union territories after its fall in 1991. The Russian Mob’s own members have been known to call their crime group “Организация” (”The Organization”)
- Yakuza (also known as gokudō) Today, the Yakuza are among the largest crime organizations in the world. In Japanese legal terminology, yakuza organizations are referred to as bōryokudan, literally “violence groups”, Yakuza have about 86 300 members.
- The Irish Mob is one of the oldest organized crime groups in the United States, in existence since the early 19th century.
- The Albanian Mafia (AM) or Albanian Organized Crime (AOC) are the general terms used for various criminal organizations based in Albania or composed of ethnic Albanians. Albanian criminals are significantly active in the United States and the European Union (EU) countries, participating in a diverse range of criminal enterprises from narcotics and gunrunning.
- Yardie gangs are notorious for their involvement in gun crime and the illegal drug trade, notably marijuana and crack cocaine.
- The Jamaican Posse is a loose coalition of gangs, based predominantly in the New York City area, first being involved in drugs and gun-running in the early 1980s.