ABSTRACT
The major point about organized crime and politics is simple enough, although the manifestations of the relationships are complex in the extreme. The centrality of the structure of municipal politics as the key to the social system of organized crime cannot be emphasized too strongly. In many instances the rise and fall of professional criminals seems intimately related to the political fortunes of district leaders and vice versa throughout the decades under consideration. The Commission’s general point about relationships indicates the constantly reiterated discovery of the obvious: district leaders are linked to professional criminals and together they form the base of city politics and perforce the social system of organized crime. Both the competitive nature of local politics and its function as the fulcrum of the social system of organized crime can also be seen by turning attention from Manhattan to Brooklyn, from Costello to Joseph Adonis.
