The extortion-only view of mafia protection stems from an informational bias

Evidence

The reader may wonder how the foregoing tallies with the commonplace view of the mafia as offering protection from danger and distrust, which the mafia itself creates. The mafia does not, in other words, supply a real service but merely practices extortion. This view is in part the result of an informational bias exaggerating the effect of extortion as opposed to those transactions in which the likelihood of being cheated (or being caught cheating) is truly reduced as a result of protection. We hear more about the former simply because dealers are more likely to talk to the police in this case than in the latter. In the last three chapters of this book I present a body of evidence which proves beyond any reasonable doubt that mafia protection can be genuine indeed. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 72

Categorization

• QUESTION: Testable claim: victims of genuine protection don’t report to police while extortion victims do, biasing the record toward extortion. Worth chasing the evidence in the later chapters.