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Criminal Relations

On the Importance of Trust in Criminal Relations

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INTRODUCTION

According to conventional wisdom, trust is an essential feature of organized crime. Because criminals have no recourse to the judicial system in the event of contract violations and deceit, they have to rely largely on trust to cope with the risks that are inherent in interactions with others under conditions of illegality. Because trust is a necessary component of criminal relations, it is further argued, organized crime tends to be embedded in ties of kinship, ethnicity, and ritual kinship within Mafia-like fraternal organizations (Black et al., 2001:58; Bovenkerk, 1998:122; Kenney and Finckenauer, 1995:43; von Lampe, 1999:220-1; 2001b; Lupsha, 1986:33-4; Paoli, 2002:84).

Others have cast doubt on the general validity of these assumptions by arguing that organized crime is better characterized by a lack of trust (van Duyne et al., 2001:99, 127), as people who tend towards criminality are unlikely, in the words of Gottfredson and Hirschi,...

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7.3 Accessory

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As stated in Section 7.1.1 “Accomplice Liability”, at early common law, a defendant who helped plan the offense but was not present at the scene when the principal committed the crime was an accessory before the fact. A defendant who helped the principal avoid detection after the principal committed the crime was an accessory after the fact. In modern times, an accessory before the fact is an accomplice, and an accessory after the fact is an accessory, which is a separate and distinct offense. Some states still call the crime of accessory “accessory after the fact” (Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 274, 2011) or “hindering prosecution” (Haw. Rev. Stat., 2011).

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