The Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 (Pub.L. 91-452, 84 Stat. 922 October 15, 1970), was an Act of Congress sponsored by Democratic Senator John L. McClellan and signed into law by U.S. President Richard Nixon.
The Act was the product of two sets of hearings in the Senate, the Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management hearings of 1957-1959, and the McClellan Committee Hearings of 1962-1964.
The Act prohibits the creation or management of a gambling organization involving five or more people if it has been in business more than 30 days or accumulates $2,000 in gross revenue in a single day. It also gave grand juries new powers, permitted detention of unmanageable witnesses, and gave the U.S. Attorney General authorization to protect witnesses, both state and federal, and their families. This last measure helped lead to the creation of WITSEC, an acronym for witness security.
Part of the Act created the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
Famous quotes containing the words organized, crime, control and/or act:
“Cities [are] problems in organized complexity, like the life sciences.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“There is one thing you and I as parents cannot do, not do we want to do if we really think about it, and that’s control our children’s will—that spirit that lets them be themselves apart from you and me. They are not ours to possess, control, manipulate, or even to make mind.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)
“I have witnessed, and greatly enjoyed, the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)