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Organized Crime

THE ITALIAN MAFIA and its American counterpart has been the most high-profile organized crime genre for much of the 20th century. Increasingly, the term Mafia can be applied to any group of nefarious underground criminals, whether of Russian, Indian, Mexican, Jewish, or Italian heritage, who engage in organized crime. Organized crime, in turn, can be broadly defined as two or more persons conspiring together on a continuing and secretive basis to participate in profit-oriented illegal activities. Like other criminal organizations, the Mafia (also known in America as Cosa Nostra) is involved in a myriad of unsavory activities.

In addition to common organized criminal conspiracies, such as extortion, illegal gambling, smuggling, loan-sharking, and drug trafficking, the American mafia has been involved in what can be classified as white collar crimes, such as business and labor racketeering, insurance fraud, embezzlement, bankruptcy fraud, government (tax) fraud, and stock market manipulation.

Origins

There has long been a debate about the origins of the Mafia, although there appears to be a consensus that it evolved from a patriarchic social network that has existed in Sicily, Italy, for centuries. Secret groups made up of ethnic Italians began to emerge in North America during the latter part of the 19th century with the massive Italian diaspora, or emigration. The debate circles around whether a secret criminal conspiracy, methods, and infrastructure was exported from Italy to North America around this time or conversely, if the origins of the North American Cosa Nostra can more accurately be traced to the cultural environment indigenous to the United States, and to a lesser extent, Canada.

As a reflection of its secretive nature, the Mafia, has been defined, conceptualized, and characterized in any number of different ways. Some have argued that the Mafia is a worldwide criminal organization headquartered in Sicily, with branch plant families located throughout the world, including North America.

Under this characterization, the Mafia is an inter-connected global criminal conspiracy, with the same historical origins, over-lapping memberships, and corresponding codes and membership rites of passage. Others have argued that the American Cosa Nostra is separate and distinct from the Sicilian Mafia in its origins, development, and operations.

Our Thing

Some scholars stress that the word mafia should not be used as a noun to describe a particular secret society or criminal conspiracy. Instead, it represents a philosophy that is based in historical Sicilian cultural traditions. Finally, there are those who reduce this debate to a simple question of semantics: whether one calls it the mafia, the Honored Society, the Yakuza, the Russian Mafia, La Cosa Nostra, the Syndicate, Our Thing, or any other name, it involves a group of men, mostly (but not exclusively) of a distinct ethnic heritage, that is involved in ongoing criminal conspiracies.

Historical evidence suggests that beginning in late 19th-century America, groups and networks made up of ethnic Italians, in particular Sicilians, increasingly were involved in organized criminal conspiracies. The growth of Italian organized crime in America was the result of a potent mix of sociological customs and traditions associated with the Sicilian Mafia. These combined with the foreign American urban environment (complete with a tradition of lawlessness, poverty, and discrimination) into which immigrants were acculturated. Italians as well as English, Irish, and Jewish immigrants were all major players in the formative years of organized crime in North America.

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