Last decade, two prominent features of the news were terrorist atrocities and crimes of the state. One form of iniquity that faced no such attention, though, was that of organised crime. The gangs that were so influential in previous years, from the Balkan badlands to the seedy streets of Dubai, faded into the background. Was that because their influence had waned? I don’t think so. Last week we discovered what rude health those most notorious of gangs are in. The Mafia, it’s alleged, is Italy’s most profitable enterprise.

Indeed, as far as I can see the organised criminals are one of few demographics with a promising future. The Italian and Russian mafioso seem as powerful as ever. Mexican banditos could grow stronger if the “drug war” continues. From my unscholarly perspective – or, more bluntly, after reading Mischa Glenny’s fine, disturbing book McMafia – there seem to be new environments in which organised crime may thrive. Young, dysfunctional states of countries that have felt of the force of the “Arab Spring” have to be tempting prey for smart, ambitious gangsters with a taste for loose power and floating cash. As oil, minerals and other resources grow scarce people have a lot to gain from muscling in on discombobulated markets. The Internet provides ever more fertile stomping grounds.

Britain’s never had a gang culture of the sort that’s such a feature of Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The Krays, those mother-loving murderers, did their best to inspire one in the 1960s, and the thuggish rabbles of the football stands and fierce delinquents of the inner cities have left their mark, but the East End was downright idyllic when compared with Sicily or Moscow and the skinheads and hoodies are too dim and parochial to be a threat in that sense.

Yet I wonder if our society has become more vulnerable to organised crime. Multiculturalism – “the fact of…”, that is, not “the theory of…” – seems to provide fecund terrain for gangsters. From Israel to Eastern Europe to India tribal groups have bunched together to exploit the confused societies they find. What with unemployment, and extremely bad employment, facing a young, expectant and often dysfunctional generation there’s liable to be a lot of aimless, angry kids to be recruited. And is it just me who can visualise Tony Soprano and his concerned citizens moving in on fractured communities to take on work that cash-starved councils have abandoned? An example of the Big Society in action.

With that depressing speculation thrown out there – console yourself: my depressing speculations are generally way off – please indulge me while I chew over another coupl’a thoughts. I’ve also been reading John Dickie’s Cosa Nostra. As far as I can see, the Mafia is a great big, trumpeting elephant in the room of people who sneer at “conspiracy theorists”.  For generations few people were sure the thing even existed. “It is hard to realise how much was not known about the Mafia,” Dickie writes. People were only sure of the name, let alone the nature, of the Cosa Nostra in the 1980s. (Yeah – after Godfathers I and II had been released.) The success of organised crime has always depended on the willingness of its participants to remain silent; their efficiency in pulling off atrocities and longstanding criminal enterprises without leaving evidence of their involvement; their ability to penetrate all levels of the social strata. Basically, they engineer big conspiracies, and as far as I’m aware they’ve been pretty good at it. I’m sure they’re not the only ones.

One resource that gangsters seem to cherish is the affection in which they’re popularly held. The Mafia have been respected as much as they’ve been feared. Eastern European thugs are veritable folk heroes. Escobar, to some, was better known as a philanthropist than as a trafficker. Reggie Kray loved his Mum. Some such criminals are genuinely public-spirited; inconsistently, yeah, but genuinely nonetheless. On the other hand, their selective benevolence can be self-serving. Why frighten somebody into acquiescence if they’ll do your bidding freely? Friends can be more useful assets than subordinates; they’ll go beyond the call of duty. And, besides, if everyone dislikes you they might band together and realise they have no cause to help you against eachother. While the phenomenon of much-loved criminals has gained particular notoriety in the case of mobsters it’s true of any powerful institution. No dictator has been without admirers. Even Kim Jong-il was mourned. I suppose the lesson is that you won’t know a bad man from the fist they drive towards you; it might be a extended hand.

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