HEY, EVERYONE, HOW ABOUT A GREAT BIG HAND FOR ORGANIZED CRIME?

A letter denouncing motorcycle gangs in Wednesday's Citizen expressed a
common view that "The time has come for our lawmakers to enact special laws
that will pertain only to such organizations. It is time for our society to
be scrubbed clean of this infestation." That's unfair. Perhaps many bikers
are large, antisocial and illgroomed, and the police may be right that some
occasionally stray onto the wrong side of the law. So what? Organized crime
gets a bad rap.

"Vice" crimes based on mutual consent, unlike say muggings, are victimless
when carried out successfully. But for obvious reasons, a drug buyer who
gets plaster dust instead of cocaine, a dealer whose stash is ripped off,
or a prostitute whose client doesn't pay can't call the cops. Someone has
to enforce these contracts. Restaurants couldn't operate if one in 10
customers did the "dine and dash," and nor can drug dealers. That's where
organized crime, from the Mafia to criminal biker gangs, come in: They are
the cops for people who can't call the cops.

Contrary to myth, the mob can't make a living shaking down shoe stores for
"protection." Even if nine out of 10 paid up, one stubborn cuss would call
the cops and they'd be nailed. And it's bad economics to suggest the cops
might be corrupt, too. How could the Mafia and a bunch of corrupt cops all
subsist on a fraction of the profits from marginal businesses? But the vice
trade not only needs protection, it can afford it, because it has high
profit margins, both to compensate providers for large risks and because
its members usually don't pay taxes. Given the difficulty of enforcing
contracts in this demimonde, it's efficient for providers and enforcers to
be the same people.

Organized criminals are the antithesis of muggers: They provide valued
services, and keep neighbourhoods quiet. The last thing they want is
trouble. I might not seek the company of a large group of motorcycle
enthusiasts in a lonely spot after they'd been savouring the products of
the adult beverage industry, but there are many more dangerous places to
live than next to a bikers' clubhouse. As Kid Shelleen says in Cat Ballou,
"when a gunfighter's around, trouble just naturally stays away." I'll take
a profit and imageconscious Mafia don over a crackhead with an Uzi any day.

I'm not saying organized crime is harmless. Gangsters have turf wars,
though they mostly kill each other. Also, Canada's police are
extraordinarily honest, though there are always a few bad apples. But when
you find serious police corruption here, it's linked to the vice trade. An
officer making $50,000 a year is vulnerable to bribes from people making
$50 million, especially since winking at a crap game isn't like winking at
murder.

Another cost is the erosion of the presumption of innocence and equality
before the law. Yesterday's Citizen reported that Ontario Liberal justice
critic Michael Bryant plans a private members' bill to let cities ban
fortified biker clubhouses. "The time has come for biker gangs to get out
from behind their brick walls, their bulletproof glass and their bombproof
doors and face the music like every other Ontarian." Uh, what music?
Besides, he added "This isn't about putting a security camera outside of
Queen's Park or outside of a bank or outside of a mansion in Rosedale. The
police and municipalities would have no problem making distinctions between
biker gang fortresses on one hand and those who want to be using security
cameras for legitimate purposes on the other." So the idea is precisely to
deprive one group of its civil rights without the tedium of first
convicting them of anything. Oh, and which is more likely to attract a bomb
that might kill innocent bystanders, a clubhouse that is fortified or one
that isn't?

I don't believe in banning voluntary acts between consenting adults. I'm
not indifferent to morality, though I'm not convinced it's wrong to play
poker, smoke marijuana or even do both at once. But I am sure a society is
not free unless it draws a clear distinction between having a right to do
something and being right to do it.

If you don't agree, does the harm you think we prevent by outlawing what
you consider vice outweigh the cost, including the inevitable flourishing
of organized crime to enforce vice crime contracts? The less persuasive you
find my argument that organized crime is mostly harmless, the more you
should ponder which you fear more in your neighbourhood: legal marijuana or
outlaw bikers.