Mafia Organizations - The Visible Hand of Criminal Enterprise Catino Maurizio Universita degli Studi di Milano-BicoccaPaperback

How do mafias work? Why do they establish such a complex mix of rituals, rules and codes of conduct? How do they recruit people, control members, conduct legal and illegal business, and use violence?

Why do some mafias commit many more murders than others? And how do they differ? This book makes sense of mafias as organizations, via a collative analysis of historical accounts, official data, investigative sources, and interviews.

Catino presents a comparative study of seven mafias around the world, from three Italian mafias to the American Cosa Nostra, Japanese Jakuza, Chinese Triads, and Russian mafia. He identifies the organizational architecture that characterizes these criminal groups, and relates different organizational models to the use of violence. Furthermore, he advances a theory on the specific functionality of mafia rules and discusses the major organizational dilemmas that