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, Bonanno, and Lucchese crime families. There is even a family in Denver who had its last known whereabouts in January 1999, Clarence Smaldone is still alive and considered the underboss of a two-member mob family. The most important day in most mobsters life, the day they get made and become a full member La Cosa Nostra. To become a member of the family one would have to be recommended by a Mafia member. After that they go through a ceremony this ceremony is usually done in the basement of a fellow mobsters house.
The mobster is told that this is a secret society and there is one way in and one way out. You come in on your feet and you go out in a coffin. Then their is the final initiation where everybody holds hands and the boss (in Italian) says, “In honor of our brotherhood, I untie the knot,” and everybody lets go. The the new made guy stands and joins hands in the circle and again the boss says, “In honor of our brotherhood, I tie the knot. ” Then one is at full loyalty to the Mafia. If they asked one to leave their mother while on a death bed would one come? Or if they asked one to kill your own brother, would you?
One would have to or die them selves. If so which finger would you use to pull the trigger with. The Mafia has no mercy for any one just look at what happened to Joe Iannuzzi. Joe Dogs, as he was known in The Family for his love of greyhound racing, he was broken. His head was battered until its flesh puffed up around his skull, his nose was split open and crushed. His teeth were cracked. An ear dangled. His ribs were broken and his genitals swollen. This guy got burned AKA-break an egg, clip, do a piece of work, hit, ice, pop, put out a contract on, whack, broke.
The Mafia is involved with more crime then one can think. Back when there was prohibition who do you think was the booze smuggler, the Mafia. this is just a few crimes the Mafia commits. Mafia hitman Salvatore ”Sammy the Bull” Gravano pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges that he helped operate and finance a multimillion dollar, statewide criminal drug deal in Arizona. A federal grand jury in Brooklyn indicted 19 individuals, including six with suspected ties to organized crime, on charges of stock fraud and money laundering.
Sex probably rates higher than whiskey in desirability, and so organized crime moved into illegal prostitution. these are just a spoonful or what the Mafia does. Racketeering; fraud; car theft; robbery; armed assault; drug dealing; trafficking in weapons and radioactive material; trafficking in human beings and exploitation through prostitution; alien smuggling; smuggling of precious and antique goods; extortion for protection money; gambling; embezzling from industries and financial institutions up to infiltration and control of private and commercial banks; controlling of black markets.
The Mafia is dangerous group of people and they should be put in jail. By the late 20th century the Mafia’s role in U. S. organized crime seemed to be diminishing. Convictions of top officials, defections by members who became government witnesses, and murderous internal disputes thinned the ranks. In addition, the gradual breakup of insulated Italian-Sicilian communities and their assimilation into the larger American society effectively reduced the traditional breeding ground for prospective mafiosi. Wherever organized crime existed, it sought protection from interference by the police and the courts.
Accordingly, large sums of money have been expended by syndicate bosses in an attempt to gain political influence on both local and national levels of government. Furthermore, profits from various illegal enterprises have been invested in legitimate business. In addition to the illegal activities–principally gambling and narcotics–that have been the syndicates’ chief source of income, they may also engage in nominally legitimate enterprises, such as loan companies (in underworld parlance “the juice racket”) that charge usurious rates of interest and collect from delinquent debtors through threats and violence.
They may also engage in labour racketeering, in which control is gained over a union’s leadership so that the union’s dues and other financial resources can be used for illegal enterprises. Real-estate firms, dry-cleaning establishments, waste-disposal firms, and vending-machine operations–all legally constituted businesses–when operated by the syndicate may include in their activities the elimination of competition through coercion, intimidation, and assassination. The hijacking of trucks carrying valuable, easily disposable merchandise is another favoured activity of organized crime.
In 1975 a federally sponsored study of such crime in the United States concluded that the total volume of activities controlled by organized crime amounted to more than $50,000,000,000 per year. The ability of organized crime to flourish in the United States rests upon several factors. One factor is the threats, intimidation, and bodily violence (including assassination) that a syndicate can bring to bear to prevent victims or witnesses (including its own members) from informing on or testifying against its activities. Jury tampering and the bribing of judges are other tactics used to prevent successful government prosecutions.
Bribery and payoffs, sometimes on a systematic and far-reaching scale, are useful tools for ensuring that municipal police forces tolerate organized crime’s activities. Another important contribution to the continuing prosperity of syndicate operations is that numbers rackets and other types of illegal gambling, which provide the economic base for some of the uglier forms of organized crime, are activities that many American citizens feel are not innately immoral or socially destructive and therefore deserve a certain grudging tolerance on the part of law-enforcement agencies.