Organised crime in Kiravia

Organised crime in Kiravia (Kiravic: Iskorvibalv Kiraviē) is a fairly pervasive phenomenon and has been a perpetual challenge for law enforcement throughout the modern era.

The vast majority of criminal organisations in Kiravia have an ethnic or caste basis.

Major Ethnic Crime Families

The most powerful and institutionalised actors in Kiravian organised crime are the ethnic crime families. These groups sit at the apex of the criminal underworld in any given city, undertaking the most sophisticated and diversified criminal activities, accumulating the most wealth and political influence, and enjoying supremacy over other forms of criminal organisations, with which they have a complex web of interrelationships. The crime families are hierarchical and disciplined organisations with a high degree of intergenerational continuity. They have well-developed financial operations and money-laundering schemes, and are increasingly involved in white-collar crime and often have relationships with legitimate businesses.

Nightworkers, Gravediggers, and other Backward Kir

The largest and best-known organised criminal groups in Kiravia originate among the lower castes of the Kir people, the harsitem and the similarly positioned yakavem or "village menial" castes. During the industrial era, many people from lower-caste backgrounds fled the rigid social structures of rural Kirav to seek better lives in the cities, but found themselves still at the bottom of the economic ladder and often turned to criminal enterprise after being shut out of legitimate opportunities for advancement.

Backward Kir crime families are associated with either of two "lineages", Nightworkers (Fêraventár) and Gravediggers (Aigūtumnár), with roots in the criminal underworld of the late 19th century AD. The term "nightworker" began as an oblique way to refer to any professional criminal, whether part of an organised faction or not. In addition to the obvious denotation of someone who works under the cover of darkness, the word is also suggestive of the nocturnal sanitation-related and other menial jobs traditionally assigned to the lowest castes, which many nightworkers continued to claim as their official occupation. In the old days, the division of labour between the Nightworkers and Gravediggers was such that Nightworkers carried out the riskier, more 'kinetic' tasks of the criminal enterprise - murders, robberies, intimidation, collections, etc. - while Gravediggers were responsible for support activities, such as disposing of bodies (hence the name), moving contraband, minding hookers, and the like. The Nightworkers were the senior party in this partnership, making all executive decisions and keeping the lion's share of the ill-gotten proceeds. Over time, as the Kirish mob infrastructure consolidated from independent cliques to larger, more hierarchical families with more sophisticated operations, the division of labour between Nightworkers and Gravediggers became blurred yet the supremacy of the Nightworkers remained until the late [DECADE] Spring of Lead when Gravedigger crews in Ilminsar rose up to usurp the Nightworkers, a bloody tournant des tables that repeated in several other Lake Belt cities and Valēka with varying degrees of success, and ultimately effected a nationwide schism between the Gravediggers and Nightworkers. Today Nightworker and Gravedigger families are more or less interchangeable in terms of operations, but the animus between the two lineages remains.

A high frequency of infighting - not only between Nightworkers and Gravediggers, but among individual families of the same lineage - contributed to the decline of the Kir mob in most major cities besides Escarda. However, Nightworkers and Gravediggers remain the preëminent criminal organisations in the smaller cities of the Kiravic-speaking heartland, and have a notable presence in Saar-Silverda. They have a more robust overseas presence, particularly in South Crona, than do the other ethnic groups.

Illegal dumping was traditionally the mainstay of the Nightworkers and Gravediggers, and the ecological and public health consequences of this activity remain a major concern for local authorities.

Lone Diggers

The Lone Diggers are a group of twelve or so crime families operating mainly in the Kiravian Interior. Althou

Paisonic Mob

Ethnically Paisonic crime families are the second-largest, but perhaps most powerful organised criminal element in Kiravia.

Paisonic crime syndicates sit alone at the top of the food chain in Valēka and most other cities in Kaviska and Niyaska, Primóra, and Vondor. They compete for dominance with the Nightworkers in Escarda and other industrial cities of the interior.

Ĥeiran Mob

Ĥeiran Coscivians were the face of modern, truly organised crime in Kiravia from its beginnings with the rise of industrial urbanism until the [DECADE]s, when fierce competition from Paisonic Mob and other groups wore down their dominance in most places. Ĥeiran crime families are still preëminent in Northeastern cities like Bérasar and Livern, and some smaller cities such as Glengarry-Glenross and Dēvlinsar. Historically, most Ĥeiran mobsters have been Æran Coscivians, with some members from other Ĥeiran subgroups or from Celtic-Kiravian backgrounds. In Valēka and Eriadun, Ĥeiran and Gaelic organised crime have more or less merged, whereas in Bérasar families with Ĥeiran Coscivian and Kiravian Gaelic members face competition from newer and more violent criminal groups organised among recent Gaelic immigrants.

Urom crime families

Crime is a major concern in many Urom communities. Lower-level organised crime is pervasive, with criminal groups engaging in the similar forms of illicit activity to rural organised crime elsewhere. In certain cities in Devahoma and the Southwest with large urbanised Urom populations, Urom crime families have formed on the same pattern as their ethnic Coscivian counterparts, with whom they compete for power and clout.

Dağriostra

The major ethnic crime syndicates often have working relationships with government officials and political parties, especially on the provincial and local levels, and become involved in the political process in various ways, from campaign contributions to voter intimidation to assassinations. Collusion between public officials and organised crime, called dağriostra ("blighted politics"), is a persistent and widespread form of corruption in Kiravia, and consequently a high-profile political issue.

Kiravian officials have been known to engage the services of crime families to carry out government business by extralegal means. One notable recent example came to national attention in 2010 AD, when countyship officials in Kaviska were alleged to have hired jackhammer crews of mobsters and workers from mob-controlled labour unions to add extra potholes to tertiary highways in order to extract more funds from the State Highway Authority. There are numerous examples of the mob being called in to "apply pressure" on public-sector unions during strikes and contract renegotiations.

Street Gangs

Street gangs form in Kiravia's working-class urban neighbourhoods. Like the neighbourhoods themselves, street gangs are often mono-ethnic, but roots in the gang's neighbourhood of origin and social affinity with existing members, rather than ethnicity, are the essential criteria for membership. Modern street gangs consist primarily of young adult men and adolescents - older members generally "age out" of the lifestyle or "graduate" into criminal careers as crime family associates, though in some cities like Escarda or Primóra gang affiliation and activity may be lifelong.

The street gang business model centres on maintaining control of a localised "territory" and extracting value from that territory by engaging in stationary banditry and monopolising illicit transactions within its boundaries. Their main activities are the extortion of local residents and businesses, and the sale of drugs and other contraband, and rent-seeking from other criminals active on their turf. As street gangs often attract youth with severe behavioural issues, it is common for street gangs to engage in opportunistic violence without designs on monetary gain. Most gang-related violent incidents reported to police involve conflict between opposing gangs over the control of territory or social rivalry.

Prison Gangs

See also: Incarceration in Kiravia

Prison gangs in Kiravia generally function as pragmatic alliances among the organised crime groups to which many of the most dangerous repeat offenders in the Kiravian prison system belong outside of prison, though they also induct previously unaffiliated inmates as members and have expanded their activities beyond prison walls.

Rural Organised Crime

Closely related to agrarian paramilitarism in Kiravia.

Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs

Biker culture was imported to the Kiravian Union from Levantia after the Great War, bringing the outlaw biker subculture with it. The Kirosocialist government heavily encouraged the adoption of motorcycles as a mode of transportation for the working man, especially in smaller cities and towns, in part to compensate for production shortages at the state-owned automobile plants and long waiting lists for cars. Biker culture boomed after the end of Kirosocialism amid the social dislocation brought on by market liberalisation, and outlaw biker gangs proliferated rapidly

Unlike most other criminal organisations in Kiravia, outlaw motorcycle gangs do not limit their membership to a specific ethnicity, though most only recruit from a specific "nationality". For example, Hell's Irate Puppies recruit mainly among the Kir and other [FLX Nation] groups; Mental Theo's Buzzheads mainly recruit North Coscivian or Antaric bikers while shunning Sēorans and Kandans.

OMCs occupy a certain niche in the Kiravian criminal ecosystem. Most OMCs have a nationwide or extended regional footprint, with chapters spread across multiple states, forming useful networks for smuggling and drug distribution. They have a deeper reach into suburban and rural areas than the ethnic crime families, which concentrate their activities in urban areas. They are often sought after as hired muscle and as contract killers. Many outlaw bikers are adept highwaymen, preying upon legitimate trucking or interdicting contraband shipments belonging to other crime groups.

Music labels

A new and curious entrant to the Kiravian criminal ecosystem since the 21190s is the outlaw music label (OML), or - to use the Kirav Audio Industry Federation's preferred term - racketeer-influenced associations of artists (RIAA). OMLs are groups of recording artists (usually signed to the same label) who, along with their entourages and extended networks of associates, conspire to commit crimes for financial gain. Most such groups arise from the artists' backgrounds in street gangs, bikie gangs, or rural organised crime. The KAIF contends that the "outlaw music label" moniker is a misnomer, as the labels themselves - most of which are imprints - are rarely directly involved with criminal acts.

The most well-known example of an OML was AFFLUENZA Entertainment, an imprint of Vísomer Music founded by the electro-house act Fountains of Coke. In 211208 the entire lineup of Fountains of Coke and two other acts signed with the label, as well as a label executive and nine unaffiliated co-conspirators, were arrested on charges related to four murders, human trafficking, wire fraud, and tax evasion. The case was notable due to the high profile of the principal band, which had released chart-topping singles three of the preceding four years, as well as the atypical background of most of the defendants, described by the Primóra Moon as "law-abiding, forward-caste, upper-middle class, and suburban".

Dumpster Fire Music Group SAK is also widely suspected to be involved in illegal activity, but cases brought against Dumpster Fire artists related to drug trafficking and witness intimidation have so far failed to hold up in court.

Many musical acts, especially in the regional Kiravian, rap, turbo-folk, and hard rock genres, cultivate an "outlaw" image and actively court accusations of involvement with OMLs. However, according to W.A.V. Ābelton, a retired Federal Police detective who led a task force on OMLs, the majority of these acts are "poseurs" and "when we're talking about OMLs, there are really only seven or eight groups that are of interest to federal investigators."