Drug Trafficking, Money-Laundering, Corruption, and Assaults in Jails and Society
Abstract
Drug trafficking is the global illegal or illicit trade in which individuals cultivate, manufacture, transport, distribute and sell non-medicinal substances subjected to drug prohibited laws. On the other hand, money laundering is the illicit process of converting huge amounts of money earned from illegal or criminal activities such as terrorist funding, drug trafficking, and corruption into clean money. Corruption is a form of criminal offense and dishonesty undertaken by a person, team, group, or organization entrusted with a particular position in the society or government authority to abuse power or acquire illicit benefits for personal gain. On the contrary, assaults are violent verbal or physical attacks on a powerless individual.
The four concepts work simultaneously and perfectly complement one another in society, especially in jail. Many of us might wonder how a person with no freedom to move, interact with others, and own or handle cash and properties could be involved in the situation. Furthermore, the individual is surviving in a hood surrounded by walls, an electric fence, and many police officers behind bars and closed doors under tight security. At that point, the concepts of corruption and insider jobs come to existence. The high in power utilize their position to accrue so many benefits by cooperating with the ones behind bars in activities that are totally illegal, that is, drug smuggling.
Main subject matter of memo
The memo seeks to address the issues of drug smuggling, money laundering, corruption, and assaults in society while referring to the case of the Baltimore Jail guards who recently faced charges of misconduct. The memo broadly describes the issue and the main factor that fuels it in society. Also, the memo seeks to improve the issue concerning drug smuggling, money laundering, corruption, and assaults in jails and society in general. Furthermore, it unfolds and explains various ways in which drug smuggling, money laundering, corruption, and assaults could potentially affect the community. It also describes how the issue could affect organizational culture in society. Finally, the memo outlines the strategy and approaches to combat drug smuggling, money laundering, corruption, and assaults in jails and improve the agency employees’ moral and ethical decision-making.
Issue
According to the overview and consideration of the case on the Baltimore Jail guards who recently faced charges of misconduct, the main issue is drug trafficking, money-laundering, corruption, and assaults in jails and society. Regardless of the solid security in jails, the issue is triggered by the collaboration between the prison security guards and some powerful prisoners. A third party, a dangerous national gang situated in the streets outside the bars, is the top facilitator of the illicit activities while the security guards act as the intermediaries (Wagner, 2013). They help smuggle drugs into the prisons sent by the outsider gang to some inmates who sell to prisoners. The guards are assured of higher gains that are approximately 10 times their monthly salaries and allowances.
One of the cases includes the charges against Sean Graves, a correction officer, and Baltimore inmates Garnett Logan and Michael Gordon. Sean Graves, who was charged with several allegations of distributing oxycodone in prison, was provided with narcotics by Logan to deliver them to Michael. In another case, Officer Clarissa Clayton and Craig Parker, her boyfriend, were charged with second-degree assaults related to a violent attack on Clarissa’s uncle inside the institution. The Clayton’s acts of violence put her colleague in great danger. More allegations of drug smuggling, corruption, and other crimes still advance among the jail’s staff members.
Improvement Need
The government, its ministries, organizations, non-governmental organizations, and community needs to unite to find an immediate solution for drug smuggling, money laundering, corruption, and assaults in society. Failure to act quickly, the misconducts and illegal activities would continue to advance, destroying the face of society. Improvement of the issue is needed to prevent the level of crimes in society. Uncontrolled drug trafficking would lead to a rise in criminal acts such as theft and murder in search of funds to afford the extremely expensive narcotics. Also, actions are needed to maintain peace within and among different communities. For instance, drugs in jails lead to the emergency of the powerful and the minority groups among the prisoners. The superiors receive special treatment from the security guards compared to the minority group since the officers gain massive monetary benefits. The differences resulting from inequality lead to frequent fights inside the jail that cause extensive injuries and deaths of the less powerful minority group members.
The same happens in a society where people are divided into superior, inferior, or minority due to corruption. The less fortunate are treated differently from wealthy and powerful ones in various situations by government and agencies. Inequality leads to the deterioration of peace among various members of society due to the imbalance in power, wealth, and the freedom to own properties. Furthermore, the issue needs to be addressed immediately to sustain societal development for the next generations. In a society with increased levels of drug trafficking and corruption, development would not be favorable for the future survival of the next generations. Most of the youths would be lost to drugs and substance abuse at an early age inhibiting societal growth because a few would be focused on building the society. There would be increased cases of theft, crimes, human murder, teen pregnancies, and school dropouts among the youths due to the effects of drug and substance abuse.
Community Impact
Increased instances of drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption, and assaults would adversely affect society massively. Drugs primarily impact the user’s health with intensive addiction, hallucinations, damage of body organs such as lungs, chronic diseases such as mental illness, and liver damage. The effects bring much stress to the individuals and the entire society since it has to take action to save its people from the drug abuse nightmare. Society is forced to spend a lot of money to build unique health centers and rehabilitation centers for the individuals affected by illicit drugs. Huge funds are also used to avail special facilities and qualified doctors and the institutions to provide special care for the drug addicts. Also, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption, and assaults have increased the crime levels in the societies altering peace and unity among individuals and communities. The instances of theft, quarrels, murder, fights, property grabbing, and bribing have significantly increased among various communities. Corruption has consequently led to the emergency of the superior and minority, poor and wealthy groups among the members of the society.
Inequality has extensively sprouted, causing unfavorable treatment of the various social groups where the wealthy and superior are treated better with more opportunities than the poor and minority groups. Unfair treatments such as oppression, slavery, limited property ownership and access to resources, injustice in courts, and low chances of involvement in society’s projects have been directed to the minority (Leys, 2017). On the other hand, the wealthy groups are given unlimited power in the society to make laws, decide for the inferior group, and own whatever belongs to the poor. They are allowed to carry out criminal activities such as assaults, oppressing the minority, drug trafficking, money laundering, and corruption without being haunted or questioned by the law. Therefore, it leads to unfair treatment of individuals in institutions such as schools, banks, health centers, government offices, and markets. Also, the issues lead to congestion in jails such that the individuals arrested and imprisoned for drug trafficking and abuse tend to be more than the number that the jails can hold.
For instance, if all drug lords, traffickers, users, and corrupt individuals could be arrested and imprisoned, a quarter of the world’s population would remain in the streets and homes. Hence, the issue is tremendously consuming the community deteriorating the moral and ethical virtues among individuals. Furthermore, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption, and assaults reduce society’s productivity. The increased number of individuals in jails for drug dealing and consumption, money laundering, and those in hospital and rehabilitation centers undergoing medication have left a population with young people who are less productive. Also, the drug and substance users rarely involve themselves in productive activities while most are unemployed. The condition has reduced productivity in the society leading to increased poverty, food shortage, and low living standards among individuals. In addition, the inconsiderable issue hinders growth and development in society. Society would lack resources and focus people on building a dependable and sustainable society for future generations. Consequently, many youths have been lost to the nightmare of drug abuse, leaving a few to practice what developed the society, such as agriculture, infrastructure development, charitable work, and corporate social responsibilities.
Cultural Impact
The criminal acts adversely affect the organization’s set of assumptions divided into visible processes, structures, goals, objectives, strategies, philosophies, and the underlying beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and habits of perception. Corruption, money laundering, and other illicit activities significantly alter the organizational vision and mission. Every organization’s mission is to provide the best services and corporate social responsibilities to its clients and society. The organizations’ vision, goals, and objectives are also aimed higher to see the entities growing, developing, making profits, and helping to lift the living standards of the underlying communities. However, illicit activities lead to immoral and unethical practices, behaviors, and decision-making, negatively impacting the organizational vision, goals, and objectives. The organization with unethical employees would lose its focus on providing the best to the customers and society to work on its benefits, reducing its brand quality. It leads to poor customer rating, which destroys the organization’s reputation in public hence losing more customers and suffering a decrease in profitability.
Since businesses are built on a solid foundation through outstanding relations with customers, clients, and society, unethical practices lead to organizational failure if not addressed immediately. Also, unethical practices lead to poor employee relations in organizations. For example, in Baltimore jail case, not every security guard was corrupt or involved in drug trafficking and money laundering. Some of them maintained the jail’s ethical standards, although they could notice the illegal activities carried out by their colleagues but could not question them. When Clayton’s uncle tried to question Clarissa Clayton and Craig Parker, they assaulted him by attacking him violently. Hence, the unethical practices cause chaos, disunity, and reduced collaboration and teamwork in the organizations. Lack of teamwork and collaboration in workplaces reduces innovation, exchange of ideas, skills, knowledge, and employee interaction, leading to less organizational growth and development. In addition, the unethical practices of money laundering and corruption lead to poor interaction between managing staff and employees, which alters the organization’s performance.
Improvement Strategy
There are numerous approaches that the agency can undertake to improve the agency employees’ moral and ethical decisions. First, the agency should recruit and hire employees of influence and affluence and develop a code of ethical performance among them as a priority. It should consider integrity, wisdom, honesty, inspiration, and motivation, among other values, before hiring to achieve top employees with explicit leadership skills. They will establish a good corporate culture, work as an example to others and recruits, and have great oversight on moral and ethical practices and decision-making. The ethical codes should be aligned with the agency’s vision, goals, objectives, expectations, and standards. Secondly, the senior team should set an ethical tone from the top by setting good examples for the subordinates through adherence to the ethical standards and the desire to achieve the best performance. The staff and employees should be aware of the various risks related to immoral and unethical practices and decisions and their relevant consequences.
Furthermore, the agency should actively engage, train, educate, and communicate with the employees to create awareness and a better understanding of organizations’ ethical and unethical practices. Most organizations fail to meet ethical standards because they rarely engage employees in setting standards and rules. Good, regular, consistent, and effective communication would improve relations and create a better understanding of the agency’s ethical requirements (Schwepker Jr, 2019). Training and education would also help the employees understand the various organizational standards and ethical requirements and the relevant consequences of failing to comply. It is fundamental to understand that most employees and staff members fail to comply with the ethical requirements because they do not understand the risks and consequences of failing to observe the organizational standards.
The fourth step of the strategy requires the agency to provide a clear support route to direct and control the employees of ethical behaviors and decision-making. The management and staff should lead by example by assuming the first defense line to protect the organizational culture and lead the employees to comply with the ethical requirements. Every staff and employee should be transparent with their relevant finances to easily notice money earned from corruption and other illegal activities. Also, those who notice any instance of misconduct should find a better way to report to the agency staff and offer all the relevant truth to the authority. Lastly, the agency should measure and assess the effectiveness of its ethical program to foster compliance and undertake open discussion to improve the standards and requirements. They should be able to differentiate between what is legal and what is ethical for the organization. Success from the first to the fifth step of the strategy would abundantly reward the agency in improving moral and ethical decision-making among employees.
References
Leys, C. (2017). What is the problem of corruption? In political corruption (pp. 59-74). Routledge.
Schwepker Jr, C. H. (2019). Using ethical leadership to improve business-to-business salesperson performance: the mediating roles of trust in the manager and ethical ambiguity. Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, 26(2), 141-158.
Wagner, J. (2013). 2 Baltimore jail guards face charges of misconduct. Washington Post.