Mafia organizations. The visible hand of criminal enterprise

How do mafias work? How do they recruit people, control members, conduct legal and illegal business, and use violence? And why do they establish such a complex mix of rituals, rules and codes of conduct? Why do some commit many more murders than others? This book makes sense of mafias as organizations. Through the collation of historical accounts, official data, investigative sources, and interviews, it studies seven mafias around the world: in addition to the three Italian mafias, it studies the American Cosa Nostra, Japanese Jakuza, Chinese Triads, and Russian mafia. The book identifies the organizational architecture that characterizes these criminal groups, and relates different organizational models to the use of violence. Furthermore, it advances a theory of mafia rules, showing how rules perform specific functions in the criminal organization. Finally, it discusses major organizational dilemmas that mafias have to deal with, such as the trade-off between maintaining secrecy and pursuing their business efficiently, whether to use or contain violence, and whether to recruit on the bases of kinship or skills, and it shows how both organizational structure and rules help strike a balance between these alternative needs. Taken together, this book provides a new way of thinking about mafias that can also be extended to other form of organized crime (gangs, terrorist organizations, etc.). Beyond its scientific importance, the book has also practical implications: Understanding the physiology and organizational logic of mafias is an indispensable step in order to confront them.