Both journalists and criminologists have focused on outdated stereotypical notions of organized crime. Their work has emphasized two themes: the evolution of modern organized crime from earlier forms of Italian and Italian-American criminal organization and the centralized control of North American organized crime by a powerful ethnic conspiracy. However, these views rest on an unstable empirical foundation and lead policymakers and the public to view the relationship between organized crime and conventional society as antagonistic. This approach obscures the mutual interdependence which exists between organized crime and conventional society. A more appropriate line of inquiry would be to focus on illicit marketeering. Loan-sharking, gambling, prostitution, narcotics distribution, and other activities would be included in such an approach. These forms of service crime form the basis of what has been more generally referred to as organized crime. Illicit markets should be viewed as social systems which cannot be understood by merely understanding the behavior of one component. Political, social, cultural, and ethnic factors may all play a role, as illustrated by some comparisons among the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. Thus, ethnicity could be related to illicit markets through its effect on the propensity to violence and its effect on criminal organization. Two notes are included. A bibliography listing about 800 references is located at the end of the volume containing this paper.