• mafia
• organized crime
• security

In defining or more accurately describing organized crime confusion arises because of the inherent difficulty in using a noun to define an action, a multifarious series of relations. Criminal organizations find themselves mobilized for different goals, and simultaneously involved in activities where the distinction between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’, ‘protection’ and ‘predation’, or ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’ is blurred. This study is focused on the challenge of Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafioso organization, to the internal security of Italy. We shall attempt to analyze the domestic conditions and mechanisms of threats’ perceptions, and the governmental response to the mafioso offensive in the early '90s. In order to do this, we show how some situations could deteriorate in some places to a point where criminal organizations can undermine a government’s ability to govern, as in Italy (and in other countries), then the problem goes beyond law and order and becomes a national and international security concern.