International Journal on Criminology Volume 4, Number 2, Winter 2016 | Page 113

Mafia: From the Use of Violence to Artificial Scarcity
Definition of a Mafia Association. When Intimidation Replaces Violence
Violence may be characteristic of the Mafia. However, is it essential to the
definition of a Mafia association? This is not what the Italian Penal Code seems to
think when it states:
The association is of a Mafia type when those who belong to it use force of
intimidation from the associative tie and from the condition of subjection and code
of silence which derive from it in order to commit offences, to acquire by direct
or indirect means the management or at least the control of economic activities,
concessions, authorizations, adjudications and public services or to gain profits or
unjust advantages for themselves or others, or else with the purpose of preventing
or hampering free exercise of the vote or procuring votes for themselves or others at
election times. (article 416-bis)
In this extract, as in the rest of the article, the word violence does not appear.
All that is mentioned is the “force of intimidation” which characterizes the Mafia.
Certainly, this can be likened to an implicit form of violence. But it is far from trivial
that the matter of conspicuous violence is not mentioned, thus contradicting the
image generally associated with the Mafia. This is largely explained by the context in
which this article of the Italian Penal Code was written. It concerned the integration
of the so-called Rognoni-La Torre law which was only adopted in 1982 and which
finally made a distinction between Mafia-type associations and simple criminal
associations. In fact, in the 1980s, the Mafia had already been deeply embedded
for several decades. Article 416-bis, therefore, describes a criminal phenomenon
that had already attained a certain degree of maturity. The Mafia described by the
Italian Penal Code was not the Mafia as seen in its violent early stages when its
aim was to take root in society, but a Mafia that had attained a local power that
was generally accepted, at least passively, by the population. Conspicuous violence
is marginalized in the article for at least two reasons—inside the Mafia there is a
comparative disadvantage to carrying out recurrent and visible acts of violence; and
externally, there is a comparative advantage for certain non-Mafiosi in tolerating and
even cooperating with the Mafia that is becoming established.
Any conspicuous act of violence produces a dual reaction that is hostile to
the Mafia. First, it leads to a response from the forces of order and the law. And
second, the civilian population may also manifest its displeasure. This was the case
in Palermo following the bloody decade of the 1980s and the murders of judges
Falcone and Borsellino in 1992. A revolt known as the “white sheets revolt” was then
seen in Palermo: white sheets appeared on people’s balconies as a sign of purity and
popular rejection of the violence and of Mafia power.
For the Mafia, abandoning conspicuous violence also means using its
established territorial power to enter into a new type of relationship with civil
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