ABSTRACT
More than the Mafia as we know it today, the earliest form of organized crime in America was a brotherhood of evil, similar to the one created in the Bourbon prisons, before the unification of Italy. It was a criminal melting pot with rituals and codes almost identical to those of the Bella Società Riformata, the “Beautiful Reformed Company,” as the Neapolitan Camorra of the 1800s was known. 1 There was no room for regional discrimination among criminals of Italian descent. The competition, particularly with Irish and Jewish gangs, was feared and brutal.
