[n4r9]

Sounds a little like the Thieves' Guild in Discworld.

> The Thieves' Guild was established early in Lord Havelock Vetinari's rule of Ankh-Morpork. Lord Vetinari realised that what people crave is stability, and that, while it is impossible to stamp out crime altogether, it is possible to regulate it. The major gang leaders of the city were therefore called to the Patrician's Palace, where they agreed to be held responsible for ensuring a socially acceptable number of thefts.

> While initially the main money-making venture of Thieves' Guild members remained theft, albeit under strict guidelines and leaving a receipt, more recent books show a system of "insurance", whereby people may pay a fee directly to the Guild and therefore become immune to robbery for a specified period.

[ErroneousBosh]

And my favourite:

"There must be a hundred dollars in there", he moaned, "I mean that's not my league, I can't steal that much! You've got to be in the Guild of Lawyers to steal that much!"

[toyg]

Even without reaching for fantasy, the real world has plenty of examples of "regulated crime" with various degrees of officialdom. From the Japanese Yakuza of the Showa era, to the mafia of postwar Italy, governments will often prefer to deal with organised crime by striking deals and agreeing to shared rules of engagement.

[ErroneousBosh]

When I lived in Glasgow's leafy suburbia, my local pub was roughly equidistant between a pair of taxi offices and the local police station, so the regulars were in roughly equal quantity off-duty police or off-duty small-to-medium-scale gangsters.

Despite this, the pub was considered neutral ground and the hats were very much off, in there.

And nobody would ever be so improper as to be a grass or a "bent copper".

But, equally, it might become known that someone particularly unpleasant may be found in a particular place, alive and well at least until the weekend, or it might become known that someone's more questionable side businesses were getting a little too noticeable and maybe older and wiser heads needed to offer them some friendly advice, before they got themselves in trouble over it.

And so it went, peaceful for everyone, unless the old boy that had a stroke was in, throwing pound coins at people's heads and shouting "ELVIS!" until they put Elvis on the jukebox for him.

Simpler times, long gone now, washed away in a flood of gentrification, and now there's nothing really keeping the nastier elements in check.

[pseudohadamard]

> Even without reaching for fantasy, the real world has plenty of examples of "regulated crime" with various degrees of officialdom. From the Japanese Yakuza of the Showa era, to the mafia of postwar Italy,

... to the government of Russia ...

[thesmtsolver2]

> system of "insurance", whereby people may pay a fee directly to the Guild and therefore become immune to robbery for a specified period.

We call that taxes