AMERICAN ORGANIZED CRIME AND THE SICILIAN MAFIA

In the United States, criminals have managed to organize a nation-wide illicit cartel and confederation. This organization is dedicated to amassing millions of dollars from usury and the illicit sale of lottery tickets, chances on the outcome of horse races and athletic events, and the sale or manipulation of sexual intercourse, narcotics, and liquor. Its presence in our society is morally reprehensible because any citizen purchasing illicit goods and services from organized criminals contributes to an underground culture of fraud, corruption, violence, and murder. Nevertheless, criminal organizations dealing only in illicit goods and services are no great threat to the nation. The danger of organized crime arises because the vast profits acquired from the sale of illicit goods and services are being invested in licit enterprises,4 in both the business sphere and the governmental sphere.

DONALD R. CRESSEY

B.S., Iowa State University, 1943; Ph. D., Indiana
University, 1950

Donald R. Cressey is Dean of the College of Letters and Science and Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has been Professor of Sociology and Chairman of the Department of Anthropology-Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, Visiting Fellow in the Insitute of Criminology at Cambridge University, and Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Oslo. He has conducted research in the Illinois State Penitentiary, the California Institution for Men, the U.S. Penitentiary at Terre Haute, the Wisconsin State Prison, and the Wisconsin State Reformatory. His publications include: Other People's Money: A Study in the Social Psychology of Embezzlement; Principles of Criminology (now in its Seventh Edition); and The Prison: Studies in Institutional Organization and Change. He also has published numerous articles on crime, delinquency, and corrections in sociological, psychological, and legal journals. Dr. Cressey is currently Chairman of the Criminology Section of the American Sociological Association. He has been President of the Pacific Sociological Association and a member of the Council of the American Sociological Association.

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It is when criminal syndicates start to undermine basic enonomic and political traditions and institutions that the real trouble begins. And the real trouble has begun in the United States.

It is one thing to make money in an illegal gambling enterprise, but it is another thing to achieve business monopoly by means of a simple weapon a gun. It is one thing to amass a fortune in usury, but it is another thing to bribe a government official in order to get a construction contract. It is one thing to control gam

bling and most other illegal activities in a neighborhood, but it is another thing to demand, with a gun, a share of the butcher's profits, the baker's profits, the doctor's fees, and the banker's interest rates.

While organized criminals do not yet have control of all the legitimate economic and political activities in any metropolitan or other geographic area of America, they do have control of some of those activities in many areas. Members of crime syndicates have invested in a wide variety of businesses, and they are not operating those businesses legally, as the Kefauver Committee showed over a decade ago. They continue to invest, and they continue to monopolize by force. Further, rulers of crime syndicates have strong interests in the governmental process, and they are "represented," in one form or another, in legislative, judicial, and executive bodies all over the country. They have gone beyond buying licenses to gamble from law-enforcement officials and minor city officials and now are concerned with influencing legislation on matters ranging from food services to garbage collection.

We recognize a danger. We cannot be sure of the degree of the danger any more than the observer of the beginnings of any other kind of monopoly can be sure of the degree of danger. If a large retail firm lowers its prices to a level such that its small independent competitors go bankrupt, that is free enterprise. If, after its competitors are forced out of business, the large firm raises its prices above those existing when it had competitors, thus forcing consumers to pay a tribute, that is exploitive monopolistic practice. By analogy, rulers of crime syndicates are beginning to drive legitimate businessmen, labor leaders, and other supporters of the ideology of free competition to the wall. They have estab

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lished, by force, intimidation, and even more "legal" methods, monopolies in several relatively small fields such. as distribution of vending machines, the supplying of linen to night clubs, and the supplying of some forms of labor.

A former Special Attorney in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the U.S. Department of Justice accurately has pointed out that "when organized crime embarks on a venture in legitimate business it ordinarily brings to that venture all the techniques of violence and intimidation which are employed in its illegal enterprises." 1 Accordingly, consumers and taxpayers unknowingly pay tribute to them. This situation is more dangerous than was the situation in the 1920's and 1930's when the monopolies controlled by organized criminals were primarily monopolies on only the distribution of illicit goods and services. The real danger is that the trend will continue to the point where syndicate rulers gain such a degree of control that they drive supporters of free enterprise and democracy out of "business" and then force us to pay tribute in the form of traditional freedoms. Syndicate rulers are among the most active monopolizers in the American economy.

It is difficult to determine the point at which antitrust action should be taken against the fictitious large retail firm noted in the example above. It is also difficult to determine the point at which the danger to American freedom posed by despotic rulers of crime syndicates is clear and present enough to justify strong defensive and retaliatory action. Nevertheless, if a significant proportion of society's rewards go to those who openly violate the law, and if those who obey the law come to feel that criminal behavior pays more than honesty, then we are in danger. We agree with Senator Kennedy who, when acting as Counsel for The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate Committee on Operations (McClellan Committee), became convinced that if we do not on a national scale attack organized criminals, with weapons and techniques as effective as their own, they will destroy us.

The extent of the danger can, interestingly enough, be determined by looking at Sicily as well as by looking at America. Because the Sicilian Mafia has been the subject of discussion and investigation, if not study, for almost a century, Americans can readily learn more about it than they can about the activities of organized criminals in their own country. While we are confident that American organized crime is not merely the Sicilian Mafia transplanted, the similarities between the two organizations are direct and too great to be ignored.

For at least a century, a pervasive organization of criminals called the Mafia has dominated almost all aspects of life-economic, political, religious, and social-in the western part of the island of Sicily. This organization also has been influential, but not dominating, in the remainder of Sicily and in southern Italy. In the early part of this century, thousands of Sicilians and southern Italians became American immigrants. The immigrants brought with them the cultural traits of their homeland, and included in those traits are psychological attitudes toward

1 Earl Johnson, Jr., "Organized Crime: Challenge to the American Legal System," Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science, 53: 399-425, Decem. ber, 1962, and 54: 1-29, January, 1963. At 53: 406.

a wide variety of social relationships. At the same time, the immigration established an obvious and direct route for further diffusion of the customs of Sicily to the United States. Because the American farm land had been more or less settled by the time the Sicilians and Italians arrived, they tended to settle in the large cities of the Eastern seaboard, where they lived together in neighborhoods. The fact that they lived together enabled them to retain for some time many of the customs of the old country, unlike, say, the Scandinavians who scattered through the upper midwest. A certain "clannishness" contributed to the retention of the custom of "clannishness." Further, the custom of "clannishness" probably was accentuated by the move to a strange land. In these early Sicilian and Italian neighborhoods, discussion of the workings of the Mafia and the "Black Hand" was commonplace. Violence was attributed to these organizations, and people feared the names. Men were shot on the streets but, out of fear, obvious witnesses refused to come forward. In Brooklyn, it became customary for housewives to say to each other, on the occasion of hearing the sounds of a murderer's pistol, “It is sad that someone's injured horse had to be destroyed." Fear was present, just as it had been in Italy and Sicily. No one can be sure that this fear was a product of the old world Mafia, rather than merely the work of hoodlums who capitalized on the fear of the Mafia that existed back home.

During national prohibition in the 1930's, the various bootlegging gangs across the nation were largely composed of immigrants and the descendants of immigrants. from many countries. An organization known. as "Unione Siciliano" was involved. In 1930-1931, near the end of prohibition, the basic framework of the current structure of American organized crime, to be described in the next section, was established as a result of a gangland war in which an alliance of Italians and Sicilians was victorious. During this war, the ItalianSicilian alliance was referred to as "the Mafia," and the criminal operations of this establishment later were referred to as the operations of "the Mafia," just as crimes in Italian and Sicilian neighborhoods were in the 1920's attributed to "the Mafia" and the "Black Hand."

The Italian-Sicilian apparatus set up as a result of the 1930-1931 war continues to dominate organized crime in America, and it is still called "the Mafia" in many quarters. There remains, however, the question whether this organization is the Mafia of Sicily and southern Italy transplanted to this country or whether it arose primarily as a response of hoodlums to their new cultural setting, some of the hoodlums being Italian or Sicilian immigrants knowledgeable about how to set up and control an illicit organization. There are several reasons why this question is important.

First, it is a fact that the great majority, by far, of Italian and Sicilian immigrants and their descendants, have been both fine and law-abiding citizens. They have somehow let criminals who are Italians or Sicilians, or Americans of Italian or Sicilian descent, be identified with them. Criminals of Italian or Sicilian descent are

called "Italians" or "Sicilians," while bankers, lawyers, and professors of Italian or Sicilian descent are called "Americans." More Americans know the name "Luciano" than know the name "Fermi." If the criminal cartel or confederation is an importation from Sicily and Italy, it should be disowned by all Italian-Americans and Sicilian-Americans because it does not represent the real cultural contribution of Italy and Sicily to América. If it is an American innovation, the men of Italian and Sicilian descent who have positions in it should be disowned by the respectable Italian-American and Sicilian American community on the ground that they are par ticipating in an extremely undesirable aspect of American culture.

Second, many of the Italian and Sicilian peasants who emigrated to America did so precisely to escape Mafia despotism. These persons certainly did not bring the Mafia with them. Were they once more dominated? Are any of them, or their descendants, now members of an illicit crime syndicate?

Third, in the late 1920's Mr. Mussolini, Fascist Premier of Italy, had the Mafia of southern Italy and Sicily hounded to the point where some members found it necessary to migrate to escape from internal Mafia conflicts or from the official crackdown. The number entering America, legally or illegally, is unknown. Is it a mere coincidence that the Italian-Sicilian domination of American illicit crime syndicates and the confederation integrating them began shortly after Premier Mussolini's eradication campaign?

Fourth, if the American confederation is an import from Italy and Sicily and if it has retained its connections with the old country, then the strategy for eradicating it must be different from the strategy for eradicating a relatively new American organization. In other words, if it is but a branch of a foreign organization, then its "home office" abroad must be eliminated before control will be effective. Some American organized criminals themselves propagate the legend that their organization is a branch of the old Sicilian Mafia; this legend helps perpetuate the notion that the current conspiracy is ancient and therefore quite impregnable. If, on the other hand, the confederation is of recent American origin, then an all-out campaign by American law-enforcement agencies working in the United States is called for.

Fifth, there is a tendency for members of any society or group to look outside themselves for the cause whenever it finds itself confronted with a serious problem or, especially, with an evil. In some cases, "looking outside" means attributing problems to the characteristics of individuals rather than to the characteristics of the society or group itself. March and Simon have suggested, for example, that business managers tend to perceive conflict as if it were an individual matter, rather than an organizational matter, because perceiving it as an organizational problem would acknowledge a diversity of goals in the organization, thereby placing strain on the status and power systems. By the same token, the behavior of coldblooded hired killers, and of the enforcers and rulers who order the killings, is likely to be accounted for solely in

James G. March and Herbert A. Simon, Organizations (New York: Wiley, 1958), pp. 129-131.

terms of the depravity or viciousness of the personnel involved, rather than in terms of organizational roles, including the roles of the victims. In other cases, looking outside the society or group for the cause of an evil means looking to another society or group. As Tyler has said, "When such a scapegoat can be found, the culture is not only relieved of sin but can indulge itself in an orgy of righteous indignation." If the Italian and Sicilian Mafia is in fact responsible for organized crime in the United States, then identifying it as the cause of our troubles is more science than scapegoatism. On the other hand, if the American confederation is a response to conditions of American life, then those conditions should be studied with a view to deciding whether they can be changed in such a way that the structure and subculture of organized crime will change.

The problem of assigning a name to the American confederation of criminals is in part a problem of answering the questions listed above. In a series of conferences at Oyster Bay, New York, some of the nation's leading experts on organized crime struggled to find a name for the organization, and as they did so, they indirectly responded to the above questions by saying that American confederation should not be confused with the Sicilian Mafia. The Conference Group reviewed the names commonly used by the public and by some members of the confederation. All of them were rejected.

"Mafia" was rejected specifically because it is a Sicilian term referring to a Sicilian organization, while many participants in the American conspiracy are not Sicilian.

The term "Cosa Nostra" as describing everyone at all levels of organized crime also was rejected. The phrase incorrectly implies that all members of the conspiracy are Italian or Sicilian and, further, the term is unknown outside New York. The Conference Group did not say so in its reports, but the term is not even widely known in New York. Sergeant Ralph Salerno of the New York City Police has been processing cases of organized crime for twenty years. He has listened to hundreds of conversations between Italian-Sicilian criminals, and he has interviewed dozens of informants and informers. Other than the 1963 testimony before the McClellan Committee, he has only twice (once before and once after the McClellan hearings) heard the words "Cosa Nostra" used to refer to the organization itself. If two members hear of an event relevant to their operations, one might say, "Questa e una cosa nostra," but this is to say "This is an affair of ours," not "I am a member of 'our thing' or 'our affair"."

The Conference Group noted that in Chicago the members sometimes refer to themselves as "the syndicate," sometimes as "the outfit," but these terms were rejected because they are local. Thus the Sicilian and Italian terms were rejected because they tend to stress the relationship to the "outside," while the Chicago terms were rejected because they do not stress this relationship.

"The organization" is sometimes used by members and, while this term does not imply anything about a relationship between the American organization and the Sicilian and Italian Mafia, it was rejected because it is "not very

3 Gus Tyler, "The Roots of Organized Crime," Crime and Delinquency, 8: 325-338, October, 1962, p. 334.

descriptive," meaning that it does not denote the relationship between the various branches in the United States.

The Conference Group accepted "confederation" as the best term. It should be noted that this term refers primarily to the organization of a government. The word "cartel" refers primarily to the organization of a business. The Conference Group concluded:

All of these terms are generally applied to a single loosely knit conspiracy, which is Italian dominated, operates on a nation-wide basis, and represents the most sophisticated and powerful group in organized crime. Practically all students of organized crime are agreed that this organization does not represent the total of organized crime, but there has been almost no attempt to name those organizations which constitute the remainder.1

"In es

Although the anthropological controversy about "diffusion versus independent invention" has largely been resolved, a look at the principal questions raised in the controversy shows that a cultural complex like organized crime could exist in both Sicily and America even if there had been no contact between the two nations. sence," explains Melville J. Herskovits, "the matter turns. on the inventiveness of man; whether when in distant parts of the world we find similar artifacts or institutions or concepts, we must assume these to have been invented only once and diffused to the regions where they are observed, or whether we may deduce that they had originated independently in these several regions." 5 The more extreme forms of "diffusionism" hold that, regardless of the distance or time between two cultural traits or complexes, these cultural elements had a single place of origin. Persons holding this view certainly would find great support in the facts that Italian immigrants used extortion to corner the New York artichoke market in the 1930's and that Italian immigrants used extortion to corner the tomato market in Melbourne in the 1950's. The appearance of the cultural trait in New York and Melbourne appears to be an obvious case of diffusion from Italy.

The matter is not so simple, however. Anthropologists also have noted that common needs and common conditions in widely-separated societies will result in the invention of similar things, including ideas, even if there are no contacts between the two inventors. The "common conditions" may even be conditions of nature, which at once make for resemblances in cultural forms and limit these cultural forms. For example, anyone in need of a watercraft must fit the raw materials to the natural requirements of buoyancy and balance, with the result that the possibilities of variation in form from craftsman to craftsman, even if separated by great differences of time or space, are limited. Further, establishing that diffusion has taken place is not enough. A cultural trait or complex spread by diffusion might be accepted by one culture and rejected by another. It is accepted, in form modified by the needs and conditions of the receiving culture, only if that culture creates a "place" for it to appear. In the

A Theory of Organized Crime Control: A Preliminary Statement, mimeographed paper prepared by the technical staff and consultants of the New York State Identification and Intelligence System, May, 1966, p. 10.

illustration used above, both New York and Melbourne necessarily established a place for monopoly by extortion to appear.

There is a remarkable similarity between both the structure and the cultural values of the Sicilian Mafia and the American confederation, as we shall show in later sections. This does not mean that the Mafia has diffused to the United States, however. Whatever was imported has been modified to fit the conditions of American life. A place has been made for organized crime to arise in the United States and a place has been made for the Mafia in Sicily. Later we will show that there is a significant similarity between the structure, values and even objectives of prisoners and organized criminals, but there is no evidence that these cultural traits necessarily diffused from organized criminals to prisoners or that they necessarily diffused from prisoners to organized criminals. A man steeped in the traditions of organized crime can easily adjust to the ways of prisoners, and prisoners can easily adjust to the ways of organized crime, possibly because the conditions producing prisoner traditions are similar to the conditions producing the traditions of organized criminals. Similarly, a man steeped in the traditions of the Sicilian and Italian Mafia can easily find his way around American organized crime, and the behavior of American criminals returning to Italy and Sicily has shown that the reverse is also true. As a matter of fact, if the problem of language were not present, a man could with only slight difficulty move between the Sicilian Mafia and an American prison, leaving American organized crime out of the picture altogether. Further, it is highly probable that any active participant in, say, the Norwegian or French underground movement during the World War II occupation by the Nazis could move with ease in any of the other three organizations.

It is commonplace to suggest that organized crime exists in America because "weak government" cannot or will not enforce the laws prohibiting the purchase and sale of various illicit goods and services. We believe that the reverse is true, that all four of the organizations mentioned above are products of strong government which has lost (or failed to attain) the consent of the governed, and that similarities in their structure and cultural values could have arisen without any contact between them. In all four cases, a rank-oriented system of illegal government is present, and in all four cases the subcultural values stress loyalty, manliness, intimidation, and, above all, secrecy from wielders of legitimate authority. Sicilians lived under conditions very similar to "occupation" for about a thousand years, and they learned to evade the government in power; prisoners are held against their will in an authoritarian setting; Norwegian and French underground members were dedicated to harassing the Nazis and to easing the pangs of occupation.

The American organized crime case is not so simple, for America is in no sense occupied by an alien government. Yet the similarity is there, for on matters pertaining to the purchase and sale of the illicit goods and services on which organized crime thrives, the consent of a large minority of the governed is withheld. In

5 Melville J. Herskovits, Man and His Works (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), p. 499.

6 Cf. Tan Jee Bah, "Secret Societies in Singapore," FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, 34: 7-16, January, 1965.

the United States, the crime confederation is not now dedicated to escaping all the demands of civilized government. It is as yet dedicated only to maintaining immunity from the criminal law process, especially in the areas in which respectable citizens demand illicit goods and services. Perhaps it is this similarity to unofficial underground governments that stimulates law enforcement officers to refer to American organized criminals as an "enemy." While this appellation is correct, in view of the fact that there is organized defection from the rules of the governing body, it is incorrectly used as a rallying cry for prosecution of organized criminals. If organized criminals could be handled as enemies in time of war, rather than as citizens with the rights of due process, they could have been wiped out long ago.

Nevertheless, it is not concern for due process in its pure form which permits organized crime to thrive in the United States. The American confederation thrives because a large minority of citizens demands the illicit goods and services it has for sale. The unofficial governments found among prisoners, among Sicilian peasants, and among the participants in underground movements are signs that a strong government might nevertheless be limited in its means for achieving its control objectives. The unofficial government represented by the American confederation suggests that our strong government is similarly limited. A prison administrator is admonished to control inmates, but he is limited in what he can do to and with inmates by the values of his society and by the need for inmate help in production, maintenance, and even security tasks. In occupied countries, the alien government must try to maintain security measures which will minimize the chances that it will be overthrown, but at the same time it cannot use security measures so strict that the natives cannot perform at least the minimal tasks necessary to economic production and social order. All the loyal citizens can

not be incarcerated or shot.

American government officially wants organized crime eradicated, but it limits itself by respecting the wishes of a large minority which demands the "right" to purchase illicit goods and services and by following traditional concepts of due process in trying to prosecute the sellers of these goods and services. In this game, everyone wins. Those who insist, for example, that gambling be outlawed win by displaying the evidence, in the form of an antigambling statute, of opposition to gambling. Those who insist on gambling, gamble in spite of the statute. And those who have the capital and the muscle necessary to meet the competition, can provide the illicit gambling services and reap huge profits because they are protected by the morality which got the anti-gambling statute passed in the first place. A government administered by men with strong attitudes about the immorality of vice, and with strong attitudes in opposition to' abandoning due process in order to eradicate vice, is strong govern

ment.

Before returning to observations of Mafia control in western Sicily, let us elaborate on our observation that in America we have lost the consent of a large minority

7 Cf. Herbert A. Bloch, "The Gambling Business: An American Paradox," Crime and Delinquency, 8: 355-364, October, 1962.

of the governed on the question of whether organized crime should be permitted to thrive. In 1931, Walter Lippmann expressed concern that in our large urban areas the legitimate processes of democratic government were being undermined by the wealth put into the hands of prohibition gangsters by respectable citizens demanding the illicit goods the gangsters had for sale. Now, thirtyfive years later, we are concerned that the demands for the illicit goods and services provided by the suave criminals who replaced the prohibition gangsters will eventually dominate commerce as well as government, as it does in Sicily.

The basic distinction between ordinary criminals and organized criminals in the United States turns on the fact that the ordinary criminal is wholly predatory, while the man participating in crime on a rational, systematic basis offers a return to the respectable members of society. If all burglars were miraculously abolished, they would be missed by only a few persons to whose income or employment they contribute directly-burglary insurance companies, manufacturers of locks and other security devices, police, prison personnel, and a few others. But if the confederation of men employed in illicit businesses were suddenly abolished, it would be sorely missed because it performs services for which there is a great public demand. The organized criminal, by definition, occupies a position in a social system, an "organization,' which has been rationally designed to maximize profits by performing illegal services and providing legally forbidden products demanded by the members of the broader society in which he lives. Just as society has made a place for the confederation by demanding illicit gambling, alcohol and narcotics, usurious loans, prostitution, and cheap supply of labor, the confederation makes places, in an integrated set of positions, for the use of the skills of a wide variety of specialists.

It is true, of course, that criminals who do not occupy positions in any large scale organization also supply the same kinds of illicit goods and services supplied by the confederation. Perhaps a large proportion of the persons demanding illicit goods and services believe that they are being supplied by criminals who are unorganized and who, for that matter, are not very criminal. The existence of such a widely held belief would account for the fact that the public indignation which becomes manifest at the time of an exposure of the activities of members of the confederation-such as a Senate Hearing, an Apalachin meeting, a gangland killing—is sporadic and short-lived. A gray-haired old lady who accepts a few horse racing bets from the patrons of her neighborhood grocery store is performing an illegal service for those patrons, just as is the factory worker who sells his own brand of whiskey to his friends at the plant. Law violators of this kind do not seem very dangerous. They are not, in fact, much of a threat to the social order, and they tend to be protected in various ways by their society. The policeman is inclined to overlook their offenses or merely to insist that they do not occur in his precinct; the judge is likely to invoke the mildest punishment which the legislature has established; and the jailer is likely to

Walter Lippmann, "Underworld: Our Secret Servant," Forum, 85: 1-4, and 85: 65-69, January and February, 1931.