Introduction -- Black hand, Calabrians, and the Mafia -- "First family" of the New York Mafia -- The Mafia and the Baff murder -- The neapolitan challenge -- New York City in the 1920s -- Castellammare war and "La Cosa Nostra" -- Americanization and the families -- Localism, tradition, and innovation.

What should we make of the outsized role organized crime plays in conflict and crisis, from drug wars in Mexico to human smuggling in North Africa, from the struggle in Crimea to scandals in Kabul? How can we deal with the convergence of politics and crime in so-called 'mafia states' such as Guinea-Bissau, North Korea or, as some argue, Russia? Drawing on unpublished government documents and mafia memoirs, James Cockayne discovers the strategic logic of organized crime, hidden in a century of forgotten political--criminal collaboration in New York, Sicily and the Caribbean. He reveals states and mafias competing - and collaborating -- in a competition for governmental power. He discovers mafias influencing elections, changing constitutions, organizing domestic insurgencies and transnational terrorism, negotiating peace deals, and forming governmental joint ventures with ruling groups. And he sees mafias working with the US government to spy on American citizens, catch Nazis, try to assassinate Fidel Castro, invade and govern Sicily, and playing unappreciated roles in the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Popular histories of organized crime in the United States often look to the Mafia and the sons of early twentieth-century immigrants – such as Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and Meyer Lansky – for their origins. In this second edition of Organized Crime and American Power, Michael Woodiwiss refocuses on US organized crime as an American problem. The book starts in 1789, with the birth of a new nation, intended to be run according to laws and conventions, with a written commitment to civil rights. Woodiwiss examines the organization of crime before the Civil War, which damaged or destroyed the lives of those excluded from constitutional protections: Indigenous peoples, Black people, and women. The book focuses on white supremacist crime and the pernicious influence of Southern leaders in alliance with opportunistic politicians. It examines the organized crimes of powerful business interests in alliance with politicians, as well as the corrupt consequences of the US moralistic campaigns against alcohol, gambling, drugs, and abortion. Organized Crime and American Power brings solid historical evidence and analysis to the task of refuting conventional wisdom that frames organized crime as something external to US political, economic, and social systems.

This book aims to highlight the causes why the Prohibition Era led to an evolution of the New York mob from a rural, ethnic and small-scale to an urban, American and wide-scale crime. The temperance project, advocated by the WASP elite since the early nineteenth century, turned into prohibition only after the end of WWI with the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment. By considering the success that war prohibition made to the soldiers' psychophysical condition, Congress aimed to shift this political move even to civil society. So it was that the Italian, Irish and Jewish mobs took the chance to spread their bribe system to local politics due to the lucrative alcohol bootlegging. New York became the core of the national anti-prohibition, where the smuggling from Canada and Europe merged into the legendary Manhattan nightclubs and speakeasies. With the coming of the Great Depression, the Republican Party was aware about the failure of this political measure, leading to the making of a new corporate underworld. The book is addressed to historians of New York, historians of crime and historians of modern America as well as to an audience of readers interested in the history of the Prohibition Era.

Transnational organized crime crosses borders, challenges States, exploits individuals, pursues profit, wrecks economies, destroys civil society, and ultimately weakens global democracy. It is a phenomenon that is all too often misunderstood and misrepresented. This handbook attempts to redress the balance, by providing a fresh and interdisciplinary overview of the problems which transnational organized crime represents. The innovative aspect of this handbook is not only its interdisciplinary nature but also the dialogue between international academics and practitioners that it presents. The handbook seeks to provide the definitive overview of transnational organized crime, including contributions from leading international scholars as well as emerging researchers. The work starts by examining the origins, concepts, contagion and evolution of transnational organized crime and then moves on to discuss the impact, governance and reactions of governments and their agencies, before looking to the future of transnational organized crime, and how the State will seek to respond. Providing a cutting edge survey of the discipline, this work will be essential reading for all those with an interest in this dangerous phenomenon.

Why do Americans alternately celebrate and condemn gangsters, outlaws and corrupt politicians? Why do they immortalize Al Capone while forgetting his more successful contemporaries George Remus or Roy Olmstead? Why are some public figures repudiated for their connections to the mob while others gain celebrity status? Drawing on historical accounts, the author analyzes the public's understanding of organized crime and questions some of our most deeply held assumptions about crime and its role in society.

This comprehensive and authoratative four-volume work surveys the history and philosophy of crime, punishment, and criminal justice institutions in America from colonial times to the present.