Illegal groups forget complex rituals and may resort to police records for them

Evidence

A revealing incident hints at the problem of mnemonic retention of complex ceremonies in the case of decentralized and illegal groups: “When the police raided a Triad initiation ceremony recently they discovered that celebrants were conducting the ritual by reference to a description in the police manual: (Observer, March 5, 1989). This amusing story may have a purely practical explanation: the participants had simply forgotten the ritual, and police records represented the best available source. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 394

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• CANDY: The image of Hong Kong Triad celebrants running their own initiation ceremony off the police manual is a genuinely funny, striking anecdote — good bar conversation.
• SEED: Could seed an essay on how institutions outsource their own memory — groups preserving their founding rites by consulting the state’s records of them.