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The Mafia is viewed by many people as a bunch of gangsters like those that they might see on movies such as Goodfellas, The Godfather, or Donnie Brascoe. In all actuality the Mafia represents much more than that, it is an entity within itself. The original Sicilian Mafia was just a group of families controlling certain territories in which they each laid claim to. These families were headed by a dominant male and were usually in competition with other families. The members of these families would engage into various "illegal and legal businesses with each other and outsiders" (Fiorienti and Peltzman 38). In the introduction to The Economics of Organized Crime, Fiorentini and Peltzman claim that between the years of 1860and maybe ranging all the way to 1957, the "Mafia was not a membership organization but a natural outgrowth of culture, politics and law enforcement" (Peltzman 38).
Many have tried to eliminate the Mafia from its' "control" of the underworld and its' stranglehold on......

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Approximate Word Count: 1190
Approximate Pages: 5 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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