Organized Crime Prosecutions

Organized crime has always been a challenge to law enforcement. In fact, until Robert Kennedy made an issue of it in the early 1960s, it mostly was ignored by the federal government, including the FBI. During the 1986/1998 period, prosecutions that the Justice Department classified as organized crime increased significantly during the Bush Administration, reached an all-time high in 1996 during the Clinton Administration and have dropped somewhat in the last two available years. Since 1995, the Justice Department’s long-existing organized crime program category has explicitly covered both "traditional organizations” (such as the Mafia) and "emerging organizations” including biker gangs.