ABSTRACT
Up until quite recently the majority of American criminological studies of organized crime was fixated on defining the phenomenon without considering it as phenomena.1 For decades mainstream organized crime research took its cue from government needs and perceptions, concentrating on Italian American criminals to the exclusion of other organized criminals. The prevailing paradigm was that they were organized crime, others were affiliates or associates of organized crime, or indeed something else. They were the mob or the “outfit” or the mafia or La Cosa Nostra. They controlled the most important illicit activities as well as non-Italian American criminals of significance. And to some extent, in the decades following WW II, that was true, and particularly in those American cities with a large Italian American population. The mob or La Cosa Nostra was deeply embedded in the politics of certain American cities and some states, and in trade unions such as the Teamsters, the East Coast longshoremen, and the building trades.2 With access to union pension funds, mobsters and their friends in law, accounting, and politics had a field day in private real estate development.
