Made Men Vs American Mafia

The Sicilian Mafiosi escaped to the US after being attacked by the fascist regime, bringing with them mob culture (History Wed). The Italian Mafia is a secret society affiliated with organized crime and family ties. In the 1920’s The American Mafia, or La Cosa Nostra, was active across New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago and New England (FBI Web). The Mob rose to power during the Prohibition era

In the early 1900’s Italian immigrant had few job opportunities and were forced into poverty. As most Italians saw the Mafia as an ideal opportunity to make some money for themselves and their families, it's no wonder the numbers of mafia members boomed, however,

MAFIA - "a secret association having for its object the illicit control of any enterprise, legitimate or illegitimate, which it decides to infiltrate" (Allen 6).

During the 1920s in an effort to reduce crime and corruption the prohibition on alcohol was passed, little did these law makers know they were only worsening the situation. The streets started to run rampant with crime, and bootleggers rose to power as organized raised as well. As organized crime rose so did the Mafiosas. Throughout the 20th century the mafia has controlled the organized crime scene with an unwavering fist only for its rule to be challenged by other families. The mafia 's bosses give each family its own unique style whether they be a media persona like Al Capone, A brutal killer like Charles Luciano, or completely insane like George Moran.

The American Mafia in Chicago is different from the American Mafia in New York in that the Outfit has continuously been a compliant venture with other groups and there is a lack of independent entrepreneurs. The Outfit is an Italian-American crime organization. The Outfit has habitually been structured on the origin of separate street crews connected with particular geographic areas. Each Outfit crew is composed of made guys and associates who are said to be “connected.” The street boss and his lieutenants, if they are of Italian heritage, are made guys. Everyone else linked to the crew is an associate. Also, in Chicago, made guys hold supervisory status. For the most part, each street crew, acts freely of the other crews and each street boss,

The New Mafia refers to style of mafia that became increasingly prevalent in the 1950s. Prior to the New Mafia, the Old Mafia ran their operations with a focus on achieving power in society. They often associated with those in political power, even to the extent of pledging their alliance with a powerful political party in Italy, the Christian Democratic Party (Abadinsky, 2017). In return, their pledge would essentially secure an unofficial position of power within the Italian government.

The Mafia Manager: A Guide to the Corporate Machiavelli stated that, “The best way to enter our business is to be born into it. Our principles are of the highest; honor, solidarity and vengeance. We know there’s no justice for us except we earn it. We earn respect.” In today’s time, there are more than 33,000 street gangs with 1.4 million members harboring in the United States as well as the number more than tripling for the entire world (all of them from different racial backgrounds). The origin of the different gang organizations dates back to the early 1600s (Chinese Triads). In the beginning, there were only four types of crime organizations making them the “predecessors” of the gang organizations in today’s society; “1. Secret Societies,

Before the Mafia came to America, they ruled the boot shaped country of the Mediterranean Sea. The Italian Mafia was creating so much havoc, destruction, and corruption in Italy. The Italian Mafia costed the Italian government well over sixty billion dollars annually in wasted public resources and effectively combating corruption to try to prevent the Italian Mafia from taking over the country completely. That's when they came to America.

The word Mafia itself has many meanings. In Arabic it means "refuge", which refers to the origins of the Mafia as a society that fled to the hills of Italy to avoid attack. Some Italians hold it as a word of high respect implying strength, courage, agility, quickness, endurance, and

La Cosa Nostra Perhaps one of the most poignant moments in American cinema is the closing scene in the film “The Godfather” when Don Vito Corleone’s son Michael takes over his father’s position... and one of the most unforgettable moments, a severed horses’s head lies bloody in a man’s bed. It is this tradition and brutality that characterizes the Mafia, a secret Sicilian society that lives and functions just as much today on American soil as it did and does still in Italy. To understand this organized crime, one must begin to understand how it came to be organized in the first place. During the medieval times in Sicily, Arabs invaded the land and native Sicilians fled and took refuge in the hills. Some of these refugees formed a

The Italian Mafia in the U.S. can trace its origins all the way back to the Sicilian Mafia which was founded in Sicily during the 1800’s (Italian Organized Crime). After thousands of years of different armies with different nationalities conquering Italy and exploiting its people, the Sicilians became to be more clannish and family focused. Originally they were just resistance fighters that were protecting their friends and family. They were relied on for protection, justice, and survival. Nobody cared if they got money from it because it came from the oppressive authorities. Members of these groups were known as “Men of Honor” and they were well respected and even admired because they looked out for their family and kept silent sometimes even unto death. They didn’t become an organized crime group until the 1920’s however (Italian Organized Crime). It was around this same time that the US began to see what later became La Cosa Nostra or “our thing,” better known as the American Mafia which was aided by the “thousands of Italian organized crime figures, mostly Sicilian Mafiosi” who came to the United States illegally (Italian Organized Crime). The modern American Mafia is credited to Charles “Lucky” Luciano who came over in the 1920’s (Italian Organized Crime). Luciano structured La Cosa Nostra just like their Sicilian

“It was during the troubled years of the 1860s that the Italian kingdom’s ruling class ruling class first heard talk of the mafia in Siciliy” (Dickie, s38, 2004). In this quote we find a potential reason to why the idea that the mafia was born during the making of the modern Italian state has become leading with scholars. Most likely this event shaped the mafia into what it has become because of the political influence that the Italian state bestowed upon Sicily. However, it is not unlikely that the mafia wasn’t already existing in Sicily during this time, and most definitely that criminal gangs of Sicily before this time had traits that were transferred into the mafia as it evolved under the new Italian kingdom. While the mafia is largely

The Mafia was first developed in Sicily in feudal times to protect the estates of landlords who were out of town. The word Mafia, derived from the Sicilian word, Mafioso, means family. Today, Mafia is a name which describes a loose association of criminal groups. These groups can be bound together by blood, oath or sworn secrecy. Many people had considered the Sicilian Mafia as the most ruthless mobsters of the twentieth century.

     Exactly what is the Mafia? Mafia, more specifically the Italian-American Mafia, is a group of criminals organized into "families," and operating primarily in North America. Also known as La Cosa Nostra, at one time there were 26 families in the United States - roughly one for each major city. The Mafia composed of bosses of numerous families, mostly New York, was the overseeing authority for all of the other La Cosa Nostra families. New York City is the place of origin for organized crime in the United States. Currently, there are five families in the New York City outfit of the La Cosa Nostra. The five families are, the Gambinos, Genovese, Colombo,

The Mafia way of life may seem like a romantic updated version of the western movie played out on the streets of the big cities where the good guys and the wise guys who share the same instincts and values do battle before an enthralled public but it is actually very different. The Mafia is really just a group of uneducated thugs making money by victimizing the public. Initially, the Mafia was setup as a prominent supplier of bootlegged liquor, but it has spread into many different areas of crime. During this research paper I will discuss three aspects of the Mafia which are crime, structure and decline in leadership.