Who is Mafia?
"Mafia" is an informal term that is used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the organized crime groups from Italy. The central activity of such an organization would be the arbitration of disputes between criminals as well as the organization and enforcement of illicit agreements between criminals through the use of threat or violence. Mafias often engage in secondary activities such as gambling, loan sharking, drug-trafficking, prostitution, and fraud. The term "mafia" was originally applied to the Sicilian Mafia. The term has since expanded to encompass other organizations of similar methods and purpose, e.g., "the Russian Mafia" or "the Japanese Mafia". The term was coined by the press and is informal; the criminal organizations themselves have their own names (e.g. the Sicilian Mafia and the related Italian-American Mafia refer to their organizations as "Cosa Nostra"; the "Japanese Mafia" calls itself "Ninkyō dantai" but is more commonly known as ...
