Sicilian Mafia

The drama is about a Palermo prison gang with traits similar to the Mafia: a boss, an initiation ritual, and talk of umirtà (omertà or code of silence) and "pizzu" (a codeword for extortion money).

Cosa Nostra should not be confused with other mafia-type organizations in Southern Italy, such as the 'Ndrangheta in Calabria, the Camorra in Campania, or the Sacra Corona Unita and Società foggiana in Apulia.

[27] Over a century later, Diego Gambetta concurred with Franchetti's analysis, arguing that the Mafia exists because the government does not provide adequate protection to merchants from property crime, fraud, and breaches of contract.

Gambetta wrote that Sicily (in the early 1990s) had "no clear property rights legislation or administrative or financial codes of practice", and that its court system was "appalling" in its inefficiency.

[28] Until the 1980s, leading social scientists like Henner Hess [de] and Anton Blok that conducted the first field studies on the phenomenon between the 1960s and the early 1980s, saw the Mafia as merely a form of behaviour and power, downplaying its organisational aspects.

According to the sicilianisti, the term 'mafia' simply embodied an attitude, a mentality deeply rooted in the island's popular culture; an expression of the local traditional society's fundamental rejection of the foreign invaders who had ruled Sicily for centuries.

Introduced in 1982 by Pio La Torre, article 416-bis of the Italian Penal Code defines a Mafia-type association (associazione di tipo mafioso) as one where "those belonging to the association exploit the potential for intimidation which their membership gives them, and the compliance and omertà which membership entails and which lead to the committing of crimes, the direct or indirect assumption of management or control of financial activities, concessions, permissions, enterprises and public services for the purpose of deriving profit or wrongful advantages for themselves or others".

[48] The early Mafia was deeply involved with citrus growers and cattle ranchers, as these industries were particularly vulnerable to thieves and vandals and thus badly needed protection.

At this period in history, only a small fraction of the Sicilian population could vote, so a single mafia boss could control a sizable chunk of the electorate and thus wield considerable political leverage.

[19] In a series of reports between 1898 and 1900, Ermanno Sangiorgi, the police chief of Palermo, identified 670 mafiosi belonging to eight Mafia clans, which went through alternating phases of cooperation and conflict.

[58] The report mentioned initiation rituals and codes of conduct, as well as criminal activities that included counterfeiting, kidnappings for ransom, murder, robbery, and witness intimidation.

[60] The trial began in May 1901, but after one month, only 32 defendants were found guilty of starting a criminal association and, taking into account the time already spent in prison, many were released the next day.

[61] A 2017 study in the Journal of Economic History links the emergence of the Sicilian Mafia also to the surging demand for oranges and lemons following the late 18th-century discovery that citrus fruits cured scurvy.

In an environment with weak state presence, this socialist threat triggered landowners, estate managers, and local politicians to turn to the Mafia to resist and combat peasant demands.

When the shipment arrived in the United States, however, the American buyers claimed that some heroin was missing, and paid Di Pisa a commensurately lower sum.

[110] Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and High Court judge Corrado Carnevale were long been suspected of having ties to the Mafia, in addition to the Sicilian politician Salvatore Lima.

[19] After Riina's capture, numerous terror attacks were ordered as a warning to its members to not turn state's witness, but also in response to the overruling of the Article 41-bis prison regime.

[126][127] The incarcerated bosses are subject to strict controls on their contact with the outside world, limiting their ability to run their operations from behind bars under the article 41-bis prison regime.

[133][134] In October 2017, members of the Renzvillo crime family and 2 Carabinieri military police officers were arrested for involvement in the drug trade and large-scale extortion.

[137] The mayor of San Biagio Platani, Santino Sabella, was among the arrested and accused of agreeing on candidates for the 2014 local elections with the Sicilian Mafia and exerting pressure on the allocation of council contracts.

[138] On 1 February 2018, 31 people with ties to a crime family based in Palermo were arrested and charged with money laundering, fraud and drug trafficking, as part of Operation "Game Over".

According to Italian newspaper La Repubblica, "Off they go, through the streets of Passo di Rigano, Boccadifalco, Torretta and at the same time, Brooklyn, Staten Island, New Jersey.

[146] Cosa Nostra is not a centralized organization but rather a loose confederation of about one hundred groups known alternately as "families", "cosche", "borgatas", or "clans" (despite the name, their members are generally not related by blood).

[166][167] One of the first accounts of an initiation ceremony into the Mafia was given by Bernardino Verro, a leader of the Fasci Siciliani, a popular movement of democratic and socialist inspiration that arose in Sicily in the early 1890s.

In order to be admitted to the Fratuzzi, [I] had to undergo an initiation consisting of some trials of loyalty and the pricking of the lower lip with the tip of the knife: the blood from the wound soaked the skull.After his arrest, mafioso Giovanni Brusca described the ceremony in which he was formally made a full member of Cosa Nostra.

Sociologist Diego Gambetta points out that the Mafia, being a secretive criminal organization, cannot risk having its recruits sign application forms and written contracts that might be seized by the police.

In November 2007, Sicilian police reported the discovery of a list of "Ten Commandments" in the hideout of mafia boss Salvatore Lo Piccolo, thought to be guidelines on good, respectful, and honorable conduct for a mafioso.

This presents a barrier to entry for entrepreneurs in Sicily and makes it difficult for small businesses to reinvest in themselves since the pizzo takes a disproportionately larger share of their profits.

[196] In a 2007 publication, the Italian small-business association Confesercenti reported that about 25.2 percent of Sicilian businesses were indebted to loan sharks, who collected around €1.4 billion a year in payments.

It can even happen that a mafioso who loses his means to commit violence (e.g. his soldiers are all in prison) can still use his reputation to intimidate and provide protection if everyone is unaware of his weakness and still believes in his power.