The period 1955-1985

In the previous lecture we saw how the process of modernisation of areas in the UK like the East End of London undermined the old closed traditional communities that sustained the crime families and gangs typified by the Krays. During the period roughly from the mid 1950s to the beginning of the 1970s it was common to believe that the modernisation of industrial societies, particularly those of Northern Europe and North America, was some sort of unstoppable process. Rising living standards, full employment, modern efficient cities and open democratic government were seen as the norm while older problems of crime, unemployment, poverty, social conflict and political corruption were seen as things that belonged, like Nazism and Fascism, to the ‘bad old days’ before the Second World War. The ways in which this process of modernisation would, it was believed, undermine organised crime can be specified simply:

The dynamics of modernisation

Affluence: rising incomes and full employment would undermine recruitment to crime in general and organised crime in particular. Why choose a risky job as a gangster when there was a well paid secure job to be had at the local factory? Street crime, it was assumed, would fall and certainly there would be fewer recruits to organised crime.

Security: peoples lives would be increasingly secure. Trade unions and political parties would represent working people’s interests. The welfare state would ensure no-one fell into extreme poverty, the legal system, open to all through such mechanisms as free legal aid to pay lawyers to would ensure that no-one needed to turn to organised crime to sort out their problems. Police forces would be strong, well equipped, impartial and uncorrupt. People would be able to report problems to them. Very few people would have any incentive to pay criminals to get their stolen property back! 

Mobility: rising incomes and living standards would be accompanied by mobility, both social and geographical. Rising wages and salaries would lead increasing numbers of people to adopt middle class lifestyles; the availability of free state primary and secondary education would enable the children of unskilled industrial workers to move into management jobs or become employers. Often this would lead to a geographic move out of old ghetto areas to other regions where the old ties of family and community would be weaker. Governments would encourage such trends by renewing the old areas of cities and moving people out of the old ‘slums’ and ghettos to new, modern, housing elsewhere. All these developments would undermine the power of traditional criminal gangs and families to dominate their communities through a mixture of fear and patronage. A decline in the supply of serious criminal offenders seems a logical outcome of increasing social mobility, rising education levels and near full employment in the legitimate economy backed up by comprehensive social insurance. These sources of income, in particular with the rising affluence of young people, would marginalise crime as a source of status or route to advancement. The destruction and relocation of many traditional communities through rehousing and outward migration to employment opportunities elsewhere would break up the family networks, the criminal fraternities and their sanctuaries. The streets would belong to the police and the other agencies of local governance. Ageing villains known to the community would move out to the suburbs to retire, or remain as comic characters deserving of a certain respect but no longer more than icons to be exploited by tee shirt manufacturers, movie makers and biographers. Those who remained in criminal activities under such circumstances would appear for what they were: misfits and deviants. There was also a widespread assumption, and we have no time to discuss it here, that these processes would affect not just the rich countries but, eventually, the world as a whole. Africa and Asia would eventually follow in the footsteps of the United States and Northern Europe. 

Such a view was, of course, highly simplistic. While some of the processes mentioned above were certainly tendencies in some countries, there were two factors in particular which combined to make crime more, rather than less important as a feature of life in both rich and poor countries.

Firstly,while there certainly was a tendency for rising incomes and social mobility in some areas, it was very unevenly spread both within countries and between them. Even in the rich countries such as Britain and the United States, whole regions were left behind in poverty and either unemployment or very low wage, insecure jobs. Social inequalities remained, and towards the 1970s it became clear to sociologists that they were intensifying. But one thing that did diffuse throughout society, through the education system, popular culture and the expanding mass media, was the aspiration to rising incomes and consumption. The poor saw the same TV programmes and listened to the same popular music as the wealthy and thus, among the poor, the sense of being left behind, of ‘relative deprivation’ intensified rather than reduced. This was the key to the paradox of rising incomes accompanied by rising crime. By the 1970s it was clear that rising incomes for the country as a whole were being accompanied not by falling but by rising levels of crime. Of course the main concern of the authorities in countries like England was with rising levels of street crime by young people.

But there was a secondly feature of affluence and rising incomes that bears directly on organised crime. If, on the one hand, rising incomes underminee dthe attractiveness of a life of crime compared to legal activities, they also increased the opportunities for crime. If people are getting richer they have more money and property to be stolen. In addition, some people may decide to spend at least a proportion of their incomes on goods and services which are illegal. Rising incomes might be expected to increase rather than decrease the demand for drugs, pornography, gambling, prostitution and similar things. The supply of many of these goods, as drugs such as heroin and cocaine, may require quite elaborate international operations to transport them from the regions where they are grown and manufactured, in the poor countries of the southern hemisphere—areas where producing drugs for sale to criminal networks acted as a cushion against poverty for poor people in many areas of Latin America and South East Asia – to the regions where they are consumed, in the rich cities of the northern hemisphere. So, in a nutshell, while the traditional varieties of organised crime which were rooted in, closed, settled communities and ghettos certainly declined, the growth in the demand for drugs and other illegal services laid the basis for newer, more mobile and ‘business-oriented’ forms of organised crime. Such forms of organised crime were becoming increasingly wide ranging in scope and less rooted in local communities and economies Criminals who robbed banks, stole merchandise etc. would be doing it largely for themselves and laundering goods and stolen money through increasingly dispersed global networks. The proceeds of a robbery would be more likely to be spirited out of the country and into the expanding world financial system than to find its way back into local communities who, in return, would provide a measure of sanctuary and respect for the offenders. Likewise semi-permanent criminal economies of service provision would cater to segregated markets in perversions such as pornography, drugs, and illegal gambling having little relation to ordinary upwardly mobile working class and middle class communities. Looking back from the mid 1990s the crime journalist Duncan Campbell surveyed the changing shape of British professional crime

“In a way, what has happened to British crime parallels what has happened to British Industry. The old family firms… have been replaced by multinationals of uncertain ownership, branches throughout the world, profits dispersed through myriad outlets…” (Campbell 1990: 8 see also Hobbs 1995, 1998)

So in fact the affect of modernisation on organised crime was quite complex. Traditional criminal groups like those we have focused on up to now had to adapt to new conditions or go into permanent decline. At the same time newer forms of crime appeared on the scene more adapted to modern conditions. Of course the idea of transition can be exaggerated by the fact that some of the newer forms had been around for a long time but commentators had been rather obsessed with particular high profile organisations like the Mafia. Nevertheless it is not inaccurate to talk of a transition. In the remainder of this lecture we shall focus on how two of the older forms of organised crime—the American and Sicilian Mafias—adapted or, as in the American case, failed to adapt, to new conditions and then conclude by dealing with a newer form, Russian organised crime, emerged to prominence in the more recent period.

I. The Decline of the American Mafia

1. social change

We have seen already the success of the Italian-American organised crime groups in moving out of the old immigrant ghettos and becoming a national force during the Prohibition era of the 1920s. After the end of Prohibition they moved in to mainly protection racketeering in such places as the New York docks, corrupting business and trade unions as with the Teamsters union and in illegal gambling and vice. Yet they remained strongly rooted in the traditional Italian-American communities of large cities. Their power base in these communities were being weakened by upward social mobility. Second or third generation sons and daughters of immigrants were moving out of the little Italies of New York and search of jobs and lifestyles elsewhere in the US. The rapid economic growth of the 1950s and 60s was producing social mobility in the Italian-American community. The old ghettos were weakening, and with them the communities within which the Mafia had operated. Involvement in crime became less attractive as a source of wealth and status. The coming of the federally administered welfare, the expansion of state education and a system of social security payments to the poor had weakening the importance of the Mafia and similar ethnically based groups as 'fixers' and people you went to for help in sorting out jobs and other problems through political corruption and nepotism in city government. The American sociologist Daniel Bell summed the trend as early as the beginning of the 1960s

With the rationalisation and absorption of some illicit activities into the structure of the economy, the passing of an older generation that had established a hegemony over crime, the rise of minority groups to social position, and the break-up of the urban boss system, the pattern of crime we have discussed is passing as well. Crime, of course, remains as long as passion and the desire for gain remain. But big, organised city crime, as we have known it for the last seventy five years is at an end. (Bell 1961 149-150)

Philipe Bourgois, in his brilliant study of New York crack dealers (see booklist at the end of the lecture), describes the decline of the old Mafia in the face of new groups in the area of New York where he was living and researching the drugs trade during the mid 1980s. He talks about the demise of the local mafia boss 'fat Tony' in the East Harlem district of New York in the 1980s

Although the Genovese family is said to be especially powerful in union rackets... there was something pathetic--and at times comic--about the way their operations were decaying in East Harlem during my years of residence in the neighborhood... The ultimate local humiliation of the Genovese family occurred halfway through my residence when the studio apartment above Fat Tony's fruit stand--numbers bank was burglarised. Our Italian-American baby-sitter was visibly shaken. Where am I? The Dark Ages?... Even at the height of the race riots in 1960s no-one had dared touch any of the Italian owned businesses in Fat Tony's vicinity. There was respect for us back then.

2. competition

From the beginning of the 1970s one of the, if not the most profitable illegal activity was the manufacturing, distribution and sale of illegal drugs, in particular heroin and then from the beginning to the 1980s cocaine. We shall deal with the global organisation of these drug trades in the next lecture. Any organised criminal network interested in money making was getting into the drugs trade. The US mafia found no problem in getting into drugs trading just as similar gangs had moved into the illegal alcohol trade in the 1920s. But unlike that period when the Italian-American gangs emerged as among the dominant players, fighting with and defeating other groups, during the period beginning in the 1970s the Mafia gradually lost out to other groups in the increasingly fiercely competitive heroin and cocaine trades.

Initially the Mafia was well placed. Raw heroin was being transported from the growing areas of Afghanistan and South East Arma, in particular. (it might be helpful to consult a map. There is one in the next lecture) westwards. A lot of it found its way through Sicily where secret heroin refining laboratories could be established in the mountainous districts of the island. Cultural and family connections with Sicily, combined with the continued power of the Mafia protection rackets in the New York docks, put many American crime groups in a favourable position establish import and distribution networks in North America for heroin. The American groups generally licensed other groups to distribute heroin in the areas they controlled. During the 1980s FBI investigators thought the Mafia was running heroin into the US. But in one of the largest and most well known criminal trials of organised crime in the United States, the so-called Pizza Connection trial of 1986 (which involved a chain of take-away pizza outlets as distribution points for heroin) it transpired that it was in fact young Sicilians (known as 'zips') who had the permission but not the participation of the old Italian-American mobsters. Philipe Bourgois, mentioned above, talks about The Colombian organised crime cartels who... responded vigorously to the new market opportunities in the early 1980s and violently bypassed the traditional networks of the Italian-dominated Mafia that specialised in heroin. The Colombian gangs were ruthlessly violent, unprepared to pay protection money to the old Mafia and had no interest in controlling areas of the city or becoming respected Godfathers They just wanted to make a quick fortune, launder the proceeds and return to Colombia.

3. decline of political corruption

As we saw in an earlier lecture, much of the power of the American Mafia during the Prohibition era was based on alliances with corrupt politicians, city officials and police. In the late 1930s just before the Second World War (1939-45) this began to change and more power, became concentrated in the hands of the Federal government in Washington. Public finance and spending by city governments was subject to greater central scrutiny and there were a number of important investigations, in New York and Chicago, into local police corruption. Meanwhile as far as law enforcement was concerned the expansion of activity by agencies under the control of central Federal government, notably the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drugs Enforcement Administration (DEA) displaced to a considerable extent the role of local city Police Departments in the fight against organised crime. While these agencies often competed with each other and failed to share crucial information they did undercut to a great extent the power of local politicians and officials to turn a blind eye to organised criminal activities in return for payment.

4. vulnerability of the organisation

Meanwhile the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 established a set of legal statutes relating to Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization, popularly known as RICO. This legislation is a modified form of conspiracy law in which a criminal or a civil conviction can be established by showing the individual was a member of an organisation or enterprise which engages in a pattern of racketeering activity irrespective whether that individual has undertaken criminal acts. RICO came into widespread use during the 1980s when it was credited with dealing the death blow to the heads of Italian-American crime families who themselves kept at a distance from actual criminality. Central to RICO is the admissibility of telephone intercept evidence in court. Such evidence is crucial in showing, through evidence of conversations and communications that the individual was a member of, or directing, criminal activities even though keeping a distance from personal involvement in crime. Obviously hierarchical or family style organisations in which people know each other and have loyalty oaths and show respect to the Godfather (Boss) is very vulnerable to this sort of investigation. More loosely organised network styles of organised crime are less vulnerable. (the problems of investigating and combating organised crime will be discussed in a separate lecture)

Although still around and a significant force in organised crime, the American Mafia began a steep decline during the 1980s. It can be said that the Mafia lost out to modernisation. This is quite different from saying that organised crime declined. It is to say that if we want to study organised crime in the US the Mafia is no longer the key place to start. The media obsession with the Mafia or the Mob epitomised by films like the Godfather, and the TV series The Sopranos, has prolonged a focus on such organisation long after they ceased to be the main players in the criminal marketplace. John Gotti, (pictured left), imprisoned in 1992 on RICO charges, was probably the last old style Italian-American gangster to achieve public notoriety. The changed character of organised crime in the US has recently been described by Jay Albanese:

Organised crime in the United States today is a multi-ethnic enterprise, comprised of many different groups, most of them quite small, which emerge to exploit criminal opportunities (e.g. frauds, smuggling, stolen property distribution, and so on). Many of these groups are short-lived, comprised of career criminals who form temporary networks of individuals with desired skills (e.g. forgery, smuggling connections, border and bribery connections, etc.) to exploit a criminal opportunity. These networks often dissolve after the opportunity has been exploited, as the criminals seek new opportunities that may employ different combinations of criminals. For example, an inquiry by the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation found that Cosa Nostra (i.e. Mafia - JL) have been joined, and in some places replaced by 'a chaotic violent array of ethnic and transnational criminal entities that function under new and different rules'. Law enforcement officials testify that underworld activities such as gambling, loansharking, and labour racketeering were being supplemented by financial frauds, identity theft, and global money laundering operations. As a result, organised crime in the US is now the province of more groups than ever before working from both within and outside the US to exploit new criminal opportunities. (Jay Albanese, 2004, 'North American Organised Crime' Global Crime vol. 6 no 1. February 2004 page 13)

II. The Sicilian Mafia

Our second example is the Sicilian Mafia, the emergence and organisation of which we discussed in a previous lecture. This is an example of a traditional organised crime group that has tenaciously adapted to the forces of modernisation

1. The modernisation of Sicily

During the 1960s it was assumed by many commentators in Italy that the economic effects of the post war boom were finally bringing about the demise of the old Mafia groups, whose power rested on the weakness of the government and the old localised isolated family-centred communities of rural Sicily. It was argued that the power base of organised crime was crumbling. A number of specific factors were associated with the process of modernisation itself. 

Firstly, the Mafia lost some of the functions it had played in traditional Sicilian society. Under the impact of agricultural modernisation, the disintegration of the large landed estates and land redistribution reduced the mediating role of the traditional Mafia between the big landowners and their tenants.(Blok 1975: 216-17) 

Secondly, the large scale migration, particularly of young men, to the expanding industries of northern Italy together with the expansion of public sector construction activity in Sicily itself weakened traditional sources of Mafia recruits and enforcers (Arlacchi 1988: 57).

These economic developments in turn brought forth social and political changes. Modern forms of employment in Southern Italy fostered the growth of trade unions and workers’ parties, in particular the Italian Communist Party which strengthened modern forms of the representation and mediation of interests. Such organisations, it was assumed, had no interest in Mafia methods. Likewise employers bidding for contracts in public sector construction, or in any other area of economic expansion, would have an interest in rational open and free competition and would constitute a growing force not only against the Mafia itself but the entire system of bureaucratic clientalism and favouritism which characterised traditional Sicilian society and within which the Mafia flourished. 

Increased economic activity and public investment meanwhile brought a strengthening of the state apparatus and a withdrawal of toleration of any rivals to the state in the sphere of public order maintenance. Finally, at the level of popular culture these changes undermined the traditional symbols of social prestige and status. The old virtues of the Mafia man of honour – in particular respect and social status derived from the willingness to use violence – were undermined by the those of the accumulation of wealth and conspicuous consumption as symbols of social status. The old Mafia was, during the 1950s and 60s undergoing a profound crisis under the impact of industrialisation and modernisation. As Arlacchi puts it:

During the ‘fifties, and still more during the ‘sixties the men of honour underwent a deep crisis: what was their identity, where did they fit in, if they were no longer official proxies in the mediation of conflicts and the repression of non-conformist behaviour, and if public praise and flattery from the authorities had given way to speeches at meetings and sentences in courts that denounced them as enemies of order and progress? (Arlacchi 1988: 64)

The old Mafia, it appeared, was relinquishing its connections to, and participation in, the central dynamics of power in Sicilian society. It was becoming weakened and marginalised. It was failing to reproduce itself as a social group as evidenced by the apparent ageing of the Mafia population as evidenced by court trials during the 1960s.(Arlacchi 1988: 58, 65) Arlacchi concludes:

During the ‘sixties the Mafioso’s role was becoming more and more nearly that of a mere common criminal, a modern urban gangster who had neither popular roots nor popular backing. (Arlacchi 1988: 65)

But the assumption of mafia decline was premature. It underestimated the capacity of the organisation to adapt to new circumstances and to integrate itself into and take advantages of the new forces of modernisation and industrialisation during the post war boom.

2. Mafia insertion in the modernisation process

The Italian economic expansion of the 1960s to the 1980s, like that of other European industrial countries involved much expansion of welfare state and public services: local government was building roads and schools and hospitals etc. All this involved state contracts to building and construction companies. There was also a massive expansion in areas like private house building and tourism. The Mafia was able to integrate itself into these new processes and put its traditional resources and methods to the new activities of business enterprise and capital accumulation. 

It was able to use, for example, threats of violence to secure building contracts for the companies it controlled and to dissuade non mafia compliant firms from tendering for contracts. It was able to bribe or intimidate public officials to award contracts to those companies or to give planning permission to Mafia owned private construction companies to build houses, hotels and holiday accommodation. It was also prepared to use violence or the threat of violence to hold down the wage levels, prevent the formation of trade unions and refuse to pay pension and social security contributions in the companies it controlled. It was also able to access alternative sources of credit and finance from the profits of its activities in the drugs trade (see below) In these and other ways the Mafia was able to hitch itself to the new forms of power and economy, to avail itself of new opportunities and change the elites with whom it entered into relations of co-operation, intimidation and corruption. 

With the coming of the European Union (EU) this process intensified. The Mafia was able to use its influence to divert EU regional grants to poor areas in Southern Italy and Sicily to those interests that it controlled. Funds for the relief of Earthquake disasters were systematically diverted to corrupt politicians and business interests. Instead of modernisation getting rid of the Mafia, the Mafia was able to hitch itself to the process of modernisation and the expansion of industrial Italy. By the mid 1980s the leading Mafia investigating Judge Giovane Falcone (pictured left) concluded that “We have reached the situation where any economic intervention on the part of the State only runs the risk of offering the Mafia further opportunities for speculation” (1992: 136). 

Much of the money that was invested in building construction by Mafia companies came from the expanding global drugs trade, and also with kidnapping for ransom. With the economic downturn during the 1980s which has intensified in all European industrial countries during the 1990s the access to alternative sources of credit, based on drugs money, has become an important way in which the Mafia and other Italian organised crime groups, like the 'Ndangheta and the Camorra of Naples, have increased their control of small business. Under conditions of economic instability such as at the present time, banks think twice about lending money to shaky small business – the small business sector is very large in Southern Italy. The Mafia will lend money at lower interests rates, but will seek a share in the control of the enterprise and will use violence to collect overdue loans. This is an elaborate form of what was defined elsewhere as ‘loansharking’.

At the beginning of the 1990's according to a report by the Italian Financial police (Maquis 20 September 1991) "the illegal economy is in a position to finance its operations through channels which parallel the traditional sources of bank credit. Illegal self financing, besides withdrawing some undertakings from bank tax, gives small concerns a strong competitive edge." This in fact drives many small firms to seek out the Mafia spontaneously, rather than wait for the blackmailers. Rather than pay 16-18 percent VAT or bank tax on credit, money was being borrowed from the Mafia at 4 percent interest. The other side of the coin was that the Mafia demanded control of half the assets of the company. By mid 1993 it was estimated in a report by Confcommercio–the Italian small business association that the Mafia controlled 50 percent of public works projects and building sites in southern Italy, 20-22 percent of building firms and 20 of restaurants. (see also Ruggiero 1993)

So modernisation had not undermined this form of traditional organised crime, rather organised crime itself had modernised, and used its traditional power to capture an important role in the expanding economy particularly in Sicily and southern Italy.

3. The move into drugs

In Italy as in the rest of Europe and in North America the drugs trade was, during the 1970s. becoming a major form of profitable illegal activity. As mentioned already, Sicily was especially well-placed to benefit from the expansion in the international heroin trade. Its geographical location as a gateway between the Middle East and South Asian producers and the growing consumer markets in European and American cities was important as was the nearness of Sicily to local wars and terrorist activities in the Middle East where arms exchanged for drugs in underworld markets. Italian Mafia families moreover had connections to some areas of Latin America and the United States where there were sizeable Italian immigrant communities.

By the mid 1970's Sicilians had taken over the Middle Eastern supply routes for heroin from South Asia. Usually it was individual members of mafia groups who got involved in the drugs trade often in collaboration with other criminals. They learned to co-operate with other organised crime groups in Turkey and Bulgaria. Drugs refineries were established in Sicily and also in Northern Italy. The old Mafia had modernised itself, learned to travel and handle banks and international money. Younger members of Mafia families armed themselves with a degree in accountancy or business studies as well as the sawn-off shotgun. The vast profits from the international heroin trade led to increased competition and violence with several internal 'Mafia wars' particularly in the early 1960's and again in the early 1980's. According to Italian police investigators the high point of Mafia involvement in the heroin trade seems to have been the mid 1980's when the Mafia were estimated to control around 30 percent of the world illegal heroin market. By the beginning of the 1990s this share had declined to around 5 percent as other groups – Chinese, Latin Americans, Turks and Russians moved in on the act. But unlike the American Mafia the Sicilians learned to collaborate and strike deals with other groups. This was evident as cocaine displaced heroin as the most profitable illegal drug. During the 1980s so much cocaine was being exported by criminal traffickers from Latin America that prices in big North American cities were falling, The Colombians and Mexicans involved in the trade looked increasingly to Europe. They had their own communities through which drugs could be distributed but the Sicilian mafia during this period were entering into agreements to import and distribute cocaine for the Colombian drugs dealers. 

4. modernisation in the service of tradition

However, according to the Italian sociologist Letizia Paoli (see Paoli 1998, 2002, 2004) the Mafia has not entered the drugs market in quite the same spirit as some of the newer criminal groups whose orientation is solely towards profit maximisation from criminal business. According to Paoli, the Mafia remains a traditional organised crime group with modernising tendencies. The old ‘family’ structure is still important and the aims of the Mafia still include the traditional ones of power and status in relation to the local communities within which they operate. She cautions against any view that the Sicilian Mafia has become simply an organisation for making money illegally, There has been no abandonment of use of violence in levying massive protection rackets on local business and people and as a means of maintaining domination over an area. The primary goal of the Mafia, according to Paoli, remains that of power and social domination rather than the accumulation of wealth as an end in itself. The example she gives is that profits from the drugs trade from the mid 1970s onwards could have been more lucratively invested abroad by Mafia and other Italian organised crime groups (such as the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta and Neapolitan Carmorra) if they had acted from a purely business or money making standpoint. But in fact much of the profits of the drugs trade was diverted to securing dominance over local affairs, and in particular the corrupt financing of small business and influencing the allocation of public contracts as discussed above. She concludes: 

“Throughout the last fifteen years, [Mafia groups] have exploited large shares of their drugs trade to acquire a dominant position over the local public-works market, discarding safer and possibly more profitable investments abroad. Though these last have not entirely been neglected, 'men of honour' of both Cosa Nostra and 'Ndrangheta have preferred to consolidate their control over a local market that has consistently grown over the post-war period as a result of increasing state intervention." via purchase of land and small and medium sized companies. Thus "Notwithstanding the growing involvement in economic activities, it is thus evident that, today as in the past, a primary goal of Mafia action remains the establishment of power over the local community, to which the attainment of the highest investments returns is subordinated" (Paoli 1998: 279-80) 

In a more recent contribution Paoli quotes a prosecutor from Palermo (Sicily) speaking in 1992:

The true goal is power. The obscure evil of organisation chiefs is not the thirst for money, but the thirst for power. The most important fugitives [i.e. Mafia members on the run from the authorities - JL] could enjoy a luxurious life abroad until the end of their days. Instead they remain in Palermo, hunted, in danger of being caught or being killed by internal dissidents, in order to prevent the loss of their territorial control and not run the risk of being deposed. Marino Mannoia (a former mafia member now co-operating with law-enforcement authorities) once told me: 'Many believe that you enter into Cosa Nostra for money. This is only part of the truth. Do you know why I entered Cosa Nostra? Because before in Palermo I was Mr Nobody. Afterwards, wherever I went, heads lowered. And to me this is priceless.' (Letizia Paoli 2004 'Italian Organised Crime: Mafia Associations and Criminal Enterprises' Global Crime vol. 6 no. 1 page 23)

A final difference between the survival of the Sicilian Mafia by comparison with the weakening of the American variant here which we mention briefly here is the persistence of political corruption in Italy at both the regional and national levels. (it will be deal with in more detail in a later lecture). Modernisation meant simply that the old agrarian landowner elites were replaced by the modern political party systems, in particular the Christian Democratic Party which ruled Italy almost continually until the early 1990s and for whom the Mafia in Sicily guaranteed votes in return for political protection. 

III. Russian Organised Crime

The final example we shall discuss is the emergence to international prominence of Russian organised crime groups in the period after 1990.  This is now a separate lecture. This link takes you to it