The influence of organized crime in the world and the United States is a phenomenon that has become the focus of numerous research studies. One of the central reasons for this is that in the age of rapid information access, increased travel and the dissolution of strict boundaries between nations, organized crime has become more prevalent and has access to improved communications facilities. As Louise Shelley, Director of the Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) stresses, contemporary organized crime has assumed a particularly 21st century importance. .

             Transnational organized crime will be one of the major problems facing policy makers in the 21st century. It will be a defining issue of the 21st century as the Cold War was for the 20th century and Colonialism was for the 19th. No area of international affairs will remain untouched as political and economic systems and the social fabric of many countries will deteriorate under the increasing financial power of international organized crime groups.

             (CRIMINAL JUSTICE RESOURCES: Organized Crime).

             At present there is no one definitive and comprehensive theory that deals with organized crime. (Handbook of Organized Crime in the United States, 246) One activity based view of organized crime is as follows.".organized crime would comprise all criminal acts that are not impulsive or spontaneous. From an organization-oriented point of view, organized crime would refer to all criminals who do not operate in complete social isolation." ( von Lampe, K. ).

             There are according to general consensus three main aspects which identify modern organized crime and that play a consistently important role in understanding the phenomenon of organized crime in the Untied States. These are the dimensions of ethnicity, conspiracy, and enterprise. (Handbook of Organized Crime in the United States, 246) .

             One of the most important aspects that have become an endemic part of the profile of organized crime in the United States is ethnicity.