The kidnap ban was pushed to shield protectors’ vulnerable clients.

Evidence

According to Antonino Calderone, his brother Giuseppe, during the first meeting of the reconstituted commissione in 1975, promoted a vote in favor of a rule against kidnaping precisely in order to protect the Costanzos, because my brother, in spite of being a man of great prestige within the mafia, was like a general without soldiers and feared that if somebody kidnaped the Costanzos, he would be unable to defend them adequately. Right at that time, in order to protect them, he made them recruit Domenico Condorelli as their driver, and for some time Pietro Rampulla worked for them too. My brother also encouraged them to buy pistols and not to go out unarmed. He knew, however, that these measures were not very effective. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 454

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: The protector’s weakness (general without soldiers) forces him to rely on collective rule-making to secure clients — showing how protection guarantees are backed by cartel-level rules, not just individual muscle; relates to Schelling-style commitments.

Related

• The mafia banned kidnapping because it endangered paying clients. (similarity 0.83)
• The kidnap prohibition may have emerged from an internal factional exploit. (similarity 0.81)
• The Mafia forbade kidnaping to protect its paying customers. (similarity 0.81)
• Mafia clients face competing extortion demands that the protector must neutralize (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Third-party protection requires clients to be weaker than the enforcer #expands (0.72) — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 183