Abstract
Organized crime is not strictly an Italian, Sicilian or Italian-American phenomenon. It appears to be a multi-cultural institution whose genesis was the need for a protective and mutual assistance society. Such groups have changed from a self-contained, horizontal model to a vertical, hierarchical model, less involved with protection and mutual assistance and more involved with spanning the gamut of enterprise from the clearly criminal to the purely legitimate, often admixing the two. This hierarchical model has similarities to both a military and corporate model.
Whenever I heard the term “organized crime”, I would envision well-tailored, well-coiffed, beefy-appearing gentlemen in fedoras leaning upon some forlorn ...
