The Mafia in America began during the times of Prohibition as the more moneyed and more violent successor to local city and street gangs involved in illegal activities like gambling and prostitution. They thrived in big cities like New York and Chicago. Initially, they were a big supplier of liquor which was bootlegged, and that made it necessary for them to have beneficial connections within the local police departments and with political officials. Bribing the police to look the other way as they conducted their illegal operations was very common practice in the Mafia. Nowadays, the Mafia is in decline due to the increased efforts of police departments in major cities, effective mayors anxious to ‘clean up’ their cities, the FBI, and other law enforcement agencies that prevent their illegal activities from continuing with any great success. Evidence of this, is the amount of increased arrests, Mafia members turning informants and supplying important information regarding mafia ‘family’ operations, and less Mafia activity occurring in the big cities. In my opinion, the future of organized crime not favorable due to all the safeguards and effective operations law enforcement agencies currently have in place. While I don’t believe organized crime and Mafia ‘families’ will ever cease to exist completely, great strides have been made in eradicating and suppressing current activities and discovering any new involvements due to advances in criminological technology and effective police work.

The American Mafia emerged during Prohibition as the wealthier and more violent successor to local city gangs involved in prostitution and gambling. It is thus a contemporary of the Soviet Union, another long-standing problem for the United States government. Coincidentally, the Mafia and Soviet Union have ceased to be significant strategic adversaries at almost the same time. The Mafia is almost extinguished now as a major actor in the United States' criminal world. And, to extend the comparison with the Soviet Union perhaps beyond its fair limits, the Mafia's decline is the result of both its conservatism and of federal government actions.
Initially, the American Maria was a prominent supplier of bootlegged liquor. That required good connections with the local police department and political machines. Paying off the local beat cop provided a speakeasy, with its conspicuous and regular flow of traffic, little effective protection. Instead, it was necessary to guard against any cop who might be on that beat; the efficient solution was buying the whole department, if it was for sale. In many cities it was. Frequently, that also meant connections with urban political machines. While Al Capone's control of Chicago (though some scholars question Capone's Mafia membership) in the 1920s is the most notorious instance, almost 50 years later the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Hugh Addonizio, retained strong connections to the local Mafia family. Elliot Ness and the federal revenuers, frequently less honest than legend, were a nuisance but not a major one.
At the same time, the Mafia acquired control of many unions, largely through direct intimidation of members. By 1929, when John Landesco did his classic study of organized crime in Chicago, he could already list a dozen local industries that the Mafia dominated through the unions. Prices were fixed and/or territories were allocated, with the threat of union strikes or picketing of customers as the enforcement mechanism. The Depression, which created a demand for cartel-organizing services later met by various New Deal agencies, such as the Reconstruction Financing Administration, added a few more industries (e.g., fur manufacturing) to the Mafia list, particularly in New York.
By the 1960s, the Mafia had mostly shifted from direct provision of illegal services, like bookmaking and loansharking, to selling services to bookmakers, loansharks, and other criminal entrepreneurs. The organization's reputation for being able to deliver on threats was good enough that it could, in effect, sell these entrepreneurs contract insurance and dispute-settlement services. A bookmaker could insure himself against extortion by other gangsters or customer welching by making regular payments to some Mafioso. The organizational reputation, painstakingly and bloodily acquired earlier, was now the principal asset.
Losing to the competition
The evidence of the Mafia's decline is partly of the "dog didn't bark" variety. A Senate committee has a hearing on international fraud and organized crime, and the American Mafia goes unmentioned. The Department of Justice lists its principal targets for drug enforcement, and Mafia leaders don't make the cut. The New York City Police Department has yet another major corruption scandal, and none of the events involve the Mafia. A major numbers banker in New York, "Spanish Raymond" Marquez, who …