THe Mafia Essay example -- essays research papers

THINK THE MAFIA IS GONE? THEN THINK AGAIN. 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 ... ...d 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.