In North America, we have a patchwork of laws and statutes that basically and literally (some places) criminalize membership in a criminal organization. I propose that we penalize membership, as actual policing is very difficult.

The difficulty comes in the fact that we're criminalizing a state of being (in membership of organized crime) yet you can't penalize someone for a state of being without being too harsh. While someone may remain a member for life, life imprisonment is unfair – prison should be used for penalizing actions, not states of being or otherwise. Because it’s nearly impossible to track a member’s affect on the state of crime and nearly impossible to prosecute every crime a member commits or assists penalization for membership is difficult and uneven. Uneven being unfair, it should be remedied.

I propose penalization in every means possible – confiscation of property, higher sentences, heavier tax burden (for those who do pay taxes), travel restrictions, banishment from owning and operating businesses, etc. Then you make renouncing membership and proving a break with the organization a condition for slowly getting these privileges back. What is truly needed is a systemic approach to dealing with membership – simple outlawing it will not make it go away, and does not provide a realistic platform for penalizing the behavior.

If the idea behind making membership illegal is that organized crime creates criminal behavior, then crime also creates criminal organization. Penalizing and prosecuting both the membership and the behavior is essential to dealing with the issue.

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