The Mafia - organised crime

BBC Radio 4 - Thinking Allowed, The Mafia - organised crime

"‘You talk about them having some sense of moral integrity and they manage to bring a moral justification to what they're doing.’

‘Well, what they do is they, when they join the mafia, they go through a personal transformation, they become different people. So I wouldn't say they are moral obviously because they, they, they kill and, but but they cannot just be about committing crime. They must follow the rules, and they must be understood and liked and believed by others. So there is a degree of integrity they must have.’

‘And of course, we were talking before about how much you know I love these Hollywood films. I mean, they are personally themselves influenced by these films. I mean that they, I can remember I mean, the craze for example, I still remember the Krays actually wanted to get their life story written by Truman Capote, the major film star George Raft. That's a general symptom.’

‘It's very much the case. So the Godfather… is loved by the American mafiosi. Although the Godfather is not an accurate description of the Italian American mafia. The mafiosa themselves love it, and actually, they imitate it. So it's a case in which life imitates art and by imitating a popular movie, they increase their reputation and they can do their job better. So there is a very technical-’…

‘I think you're talking about the head of the Gambino family John Gotti, who changed his wardrobe, began acting like Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone... Devore [sp?] in the central Russian city of Kazan, who took to speaking like Marlon Brando's Godfather, even practicing the lower jaw movement’

‘Yes, exactly. And the reach of the Godfather is extraordinary. It goes to Siberia, it goes to Far East and of course, even in Sicily the birthplace of the mafia, they copied the Godfather Hollywood inaccurate description of themself.’..

‘They penetrate the film industry and try to influence the script of the movies about themselves.’...

‘As much as we adapt to the internet, we adapt to Skype. So do they. I have a story in the book in during which a ritual, a mafia ritual, the most sacred moment for the mafia, the mafia ritual is done through Skype because some of the past, the people are actually in jail and cannot join physically... yet, the source of income remain mostly the same construction, drugs, prostitution, control of a very small territory… women are not admitted into these organizations... yet women are extremely important, but in a sense, love. The power of the passionate love erodes the organization. So mafias are terribly scared of women, because women in a sense, question the allegiance of the man to the organization.’...

‘The Italian Mafia especially in Sicily and in the region of Naples. And every time we do an arrest with the police, you would have all those women screaming, going between the police and their men and screaming and yelling and being very theatric, theatrical and, yes, and we only talk about men and I was wondering what these women because it didn't look like this sadness was real sadness. It looked like a theatre more than, so I was wondering why, how these women were living this very violent and woman, manly world.’

‘And when you began to look into it, you found that really that in a way that the women were acting as sort of transmitters of family values’...

‘Mafias cannot, they're so powerful. It's not, it cannot be only with the use of violence. It's, they have a reputation, they have to have, also respectable image to the society so that they respect them and do things for them. So and woman is a very big part of this, plays a very big role in this image they give to society to give a respectable image of this to the society. They go to the church. They are smiling. They are nice with the, with the people. So that's for the image outside. Inside the families, usually those men are always on the run or in prison. They're barely at home. So, the children, especially the men, the young boys, they never see them, their father. So who gives, who told them, who tell them to become men of honour? It's the woman, the woman tell them how to be respected. They ,tell they give them the vendetta *something*, the main values of the mafia. They are the one who transmit the culture’"