The published “memoirs” of organized crime figures, such as Mafia boss Joseph Bonanno's A Man of Honor, sell like bootleg hooch during Prohibition. Readers drink up the lurid “true tales” from “retired” tough guys, who often downplay their own criminal involvement and culpability, said Indiana University Kokomo Professor of Sociology Rick Aniskiewicz, Ph.D.

Read such works with skepticism, he advises. The subjects' rationalizations that “Everyone has a price,” or that “So-and-So had it coming,” sound like canned dialogue from The Sopranos or the Godfather movies. And, those are exactly the Hollywood stereotypes of organized crime Aniskiewicz wants to rub out with a new book in the broad field of criminology.

Theoretical Issues in the Study of Organized Crime will explore social types inhabiting the world of organized crime, as well as the rising globalization of such crime. A past executive director of the International Association for the Study of Organized Crime, Aniskiewicz will be working on the book during a fall 2006 sabbatical, under contract with Lexington Books, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Myth-busting fact No. 1, Aniskiewicz said, is that, “Organized crime is and has long been a multiethnic/multiracial activity.” Regardless of ethnicity, criminal organizations can include what Aniskiewicz calls “violent entrepreneurs” (for-profit hit men) and “financial entrepreneurs” (accountants and other “money movers”). Meyer Lansky, whose financial acumen helped fuel the early days of organized crime activity in Las Vegas , typified the latter type.

“Marginal men” maintain connections both inside and outside of organized crime, Aniskiewicz said. These might be officers of legitimate financial institutions, who facilitate the white-collar crime of money laundering for organized crime groups. The term can also refer to law enforcement personnel, who adopt corrupt means to pursue criminals or who try to play both sides.

Even law enforcement officials who battle organized crime must be considered “engaged” in its social world, Aniskiewicz said. Thomas Dewey, Robert Kennedy, and Rudolph Giuliani all shaped their public identities through active prosecution of organized crime, he noted. Plus, criminals study such an opponent intently “to know what law enforcement's response will be” to their crimes.

Of particular interest to Aniskiewicz are the “strangers in a strange land”—known organized crime figures who enter the witness protection program. Whether or not these individuals commit future crimes, Aniskiewicz said, they all face the same dilemma: “How do you live out a new identity while hiding who you are?”

Aniskiewicz's book will also look at the group dynamics involved with corruption and the “landscapes” where organized crime takes place. Crime “families” might still control illegal activities in physically bounded “communities,” such as certain neighborhoods of Chicago or New York City . Increasingly, however, organized crime is operating in “non-territorial communities [that] transcend national boundaries,” Aniskiewicz said. “The prime example would be international drug trafficking, along with trafficking in human beings for sexual slavery and money laundering.”

These cross-border crimes can be “very sophisticated transactions,” requiring executive-level planning for client cultivation, transportation of goods, and meeting demand with supply for the best price, Aniskiewicz said. For the most part, he added, the business of organized crime differs from legal commerce in that criminals obviously “cannot solve their business differences through legal channels. They don't threaten to sue business partners or take them to court.”