Sicily’s robbery share vastly exceeded its population share in 1990

Evidence

A further reason for the simplistic view that the mafiosi would themselves commit the crimes against which they claim to offer protection is that evidence suggests crime is if anything more widespread where the mafia is present. In 1990, for instance, Sicily, with only 9 percent of the total Italian population, accounted for 24 percent of the nationwide number of robberies. Although crime may be related to other causes such as unemployment, it is natural to infer that mafia protection is useless at best and possibly bogus. But even without the benefit of any conspiratorial logic, there is a sound theoretical reason why the presence of the mafia encourages crime. This does not imply that mafia protection is not effective; on the contrary, it is effective—but in protecting the wrong people. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 83

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘effective but protecting the wrong people’ resolution directly feeds the reader’s model: protection lowers entry cost into criminal careers the way it does lawful markets.
• QUESTION: The reader’s framework should probe: does the mafia raising crime by lowering criminal transaction costs generalize to Gambetta’s claim that protection is a market for trust?