Prosecuting Organized Crime: New York City's War Against the Gangsters of Gotham

This paper examines the state level legal experimentation that took place in New York in response to the problem of organized crime before the passage of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 (OCCA). It examines the development of prosecutorial techniques in New York to combat organized crime and highlights their subsequent inclusion in OCCA. By approaching the history of OCCA in this way, this study reveals that OCCA was not merely a product of federal discussion and research, but rather was influenced by state level legal experimentation.