Mafia settlement agreements can be overturned by reputation-seeking violence

Evidence

Vincenzo Marsala reports that an attempted theft in the country house of a Vicari family member had been aborted when shots were fired and the thieves fled, abandoning their truck. The local mafiosi then lay in ambush, hoping the thieves would try to recover the vehicle. When eventually they did, the mafiosi agreed to release the truck in exchange for cash. but later on, “either because somebody instructed him or because he was eager to enhance his reputation,” one member of the family, together with an accomplice, decided to punish the thieves and strangled them. The bodies were found in the trunk of a car (VM: 9-10). — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 442

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates the standard private-enforcement model: reputation incentives can override a negotiated settlement, showing the internal instability of extralegal arbitration.