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31 Crime L. & Soc. Change 1 (1999)

handle is hein.journals/crmlsc31 and id is 1 raw text is: rA Crime, Law & Social Change 31: 1-30, 1999. 1 O © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Ascent of the corporate model in environmental-organized crime TIMOTHY S. CARTER Lycoming College, Criminal Justice Program, 700 College Place, Box 2, Williamsport, PA 17701, USA Abstract. Since the mid-1980s, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970 (RICO) has been used against traditional organized criminals (i.e., Mafia) operating within various waste-trade industries. Recent civil and criminal RICO cases brought in New York City and State, provide current examples of the overall limited success of using RICO against criminal actors situated within the waste-trade industries. Although the traditional form of organized crime (i.e., Mafia) appears to be on the wane, corporate forms of organized crime have already entered into the waste-trade industries to fill the void created by the extraction of their predecessors. These corporate racketeers closely mimic the old traditional form of crime they have replaced, but may prove to be even more intractable, because, as the literature on corporate crime has clearly shown, corporate entities are extremely resistant to labeling as il- legitimate organizations. One result of addressing environmental-organized crime as strictly organized crime, rather than as environmental crime, is that little change will be forthcoming in our current environmental regulations, laws, strategies and policies. A brief history of organized crime in the solid-waste trades Organized crime has been deeply involved in the waste trades of New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere, dating back to at least the 1950s. In New York, commercial waste pickup has been dominated in the past by the Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese organized crime families. The McClellan Hearings of the early 1960s revealed that organized crime's domination of the solid- waste industry was facilitated by control of a key union representing the em- ployees of carting concerns, as well as by the trade associations that represen- ted the waste-business owners. International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) Local 813 was controlled by the Gambinos through the Local's Secretary- Treasurer, Bernie Adelstein. Likewise, the Private Sanitation Industry As- sociation of Nassau/Suffolk, Inc. (PSIA) was controlled by the Luccheses through Sal Avellino, Jr., a high-ranking officer of the PSIA, whose power was derived from membership in the Lucchese crime family. Holding both the labor and management ends of the industry, organized crime gained enormous profits from the garbage companies. Heads of some organized crime famil- ies received quarterly $50,000 tributes, skimmed from the inflated profits of numerous carting concerns in the New York City area. Organized crime insti-

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