Crime family
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A crime family is a term used to describe a unit of an organized crime syndicate, often operating within a specific geographic territory. The most well-known example of this is the group of Five Families of New York, a group of five distinct units of the Italian-American Mafia operating in each of the five boroughs of New York City.
The origins of the term come from the Sicilian Mafia. In the Sicilian dialect, the word cosca, which literally translates into artichoke (a multi-layered vegetable surrounding a vital core), is also used for clan. In the early days of the Mafia, loose groups of bandits organized themselves into associations that over time became more organized, and they adopted the term based on both of its meanings.
As the Mafia was imported into the United States in the late 1800s, the English translation of the word cosca was more at clan or family.
The term can be a point of confusion, especially in popular culture and Hollywood, because crime families are not the same as blood families, and not necessarily based on blood relationships. The Godfather films as well as a spate of "Mafia princess" made-for-TV-movies in the late 1980s underscores this confusion.
It should be noted, however, that the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta is purported to be organized along familial lines.
Nevertheless, the term stuck, both in the minds of popular culture as well as the national law enforcement community, and eventually began to be used to describe individual units of not only Sicilian gangsters, but those whose origins lie in other parts of Italy (e.g., the aforementioned 'Ndrangheta, the Neapolitan Camorra, etc.).
Sometimes the term is used to describe distinct units of crime syndicates of other ethnic and national origin, such as the Japanese Yakuza, Chinese Tongs and Triads, Colombian drug cartels, and the Eastern European and Russian Mafia.
For a description of the organizational structure of a "typical" Italian-American crime family, please see the article on the Mafia.
