Really more like small nation like entities. They provide services, welfare, have taxes, rules on the use of violence, solve disputes, have wars... and occasionally overrun the area government and actually run things.
Organized crime gets to levels where it is essentially a competing government with an equally competitive consent of the governed.
There's seldom such a thing as a nation-state that didn't start from organized crime. America started off as a smuggler gang called the Sons of Liberty, for example.
That's why they have to be paranoid about gangs: they're embryonic states
Organized crime gets to levels where it is essentially a competing government with an equally competitive consent of the governed.