[PapaBear3625]

Organized crime tends to be associated with tightly-knit immigrant communities in cities.

For good reason. In a criminal enterprise, everything depends on your knowing everything about the people you need to trust, so you don't recruit a police snitch. The way to do that is to recruit people who you have known all their lives, and whose every move has been the subject of gossip as they were growing up.

Then you make them shut up, and have everybody who knows them shut up about them to outsiders.

[goat granny]

The Mafia started out as “the black hand” by Sicilian immigrants. Back at the turn of the 20th century....It was Italian, but Italians and Sicilians say Sicilians aren't really Italian...the originated down it the boot of Italy...My brother in law was Sicilian, his mother Italian first generation in American and his father an immigrant from Sicily....made the best zacita /sp. Italian sausage. Opened up a little store and could hardly keep up with the orders of sausage he made. Made the old fashion way....