ABSTRACT
Writing about the serious crime community places one at the crossroads of several criminological subjects. It is a juncture, because the community’s population is composed of those conventionally characterized as either organized criminals, or white-collar criminals. The serious crime community seems an equivalent, but more evocative way to describe the social system of organized crime. It is particularly useful if there are no quibbles about “what is serious,” which in this context means the illegal concentration of power. The expression, the “serious crime community,” was created by an undercover operative working for the Intelligence Division of the I.R.S. in a secret project whose purpose was to gather relevant information about American criminals’ illicit activities in The Bahamas. Operation Trade winds was probably the first, and certainly the longest investigation of a sector of the “underground economy,” which is most fruitfully thought of as the aggregate worth of financial crimes undertaken by the serious crime community.
