What is the Mafia?

     Mafias are organized crime institutions that operate in secrecy. They can have control over nearly every aspect of life; from petty neighborhood crime, to complete influence over government proceedings. At their peak, in the mid- nineteen hundreds, there were several prominent mafia families operating within growing cities of the United States.The mafias rise to power was stimulated by the prohibition of alcohol in the United States. They dominated the bootlegging industry and gained so much power/ profit that they began to take hold of the American government. At the core of every mafia's actions was one thing- money. So once the ban on alcohol was lifted the mafias expanded the criminal activities to illegal gambling operations, loan sharking, extortion, and drug trafficking.

-Keenan Fleming and Xander Norman