Excessive violence can backfire by triggering revenge and betrayal within criminal hierarchies

Evidence

As I explain in the conclusion to this volume, there are also instances of a third, contradictory relationship between coercion and cooperation. An exaggerated use of violence — besides engendering paranoia in the users — can lead to revenge and the breach of omerta, as in the case of Tommaso Buscetta who, in 1983, decided to confess all he knew after half of his family was murdered. His confession brought to trial in Palermo nearly 500 persons suspected of a large number and variety of crimes (Staiano 1986). — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2218

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Luhmann/Hardin thesis via the reader’s own example of sightless Hobbesian order collapsing — but here violence against kin, not blindness, destroys the trust/monitoring substrate that sustains omerta. — connects to: Defeated officials often redirect vengeance onto what their enemies love — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 2889