Rural protection firms supply refuge and policing value that city families need

Evidence

The country, meanwhile, supplies labor and is more easily policed by protection firms, and so offers greater opportunity for hiding out, conducting meetings, and providing alibis. Michele Greco, head of the Palermo cartel in the 1970s and early 1980s, hid for a long time in a farmhouse near Caccamo protected by the local family. To be equally secure, city families are obliged to take costly measures. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 280

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels Gambetta’s core thesis that protection firms compete on territorial control, and maps onto the urban-rural resource division in Puzo’s novel where Don Corleone relies on country connections. Also connects to the reader’s framing of Mafia as private protection market substituting for state enforcement.