[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 ...