Policing the Sicilian Mafia: Repression and Control of the Mafia Phenomenon in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy

So wrote police officer Michele Lucchesi to the Ministry of the Interior on 8 July 1890. He was engaged in following the trail of several brigands active in the eastern part of Palermo province. Born in Augusta, close to Syracuse, in 1839, Lucchesi had joined the liberal cause during the 1860s, in the years of the Great Brigandage. Under the authority of the questore of Naples, Nicola Amore, he played the role of provocateur and infiltrated the ranks of the Bourbons. He later joined the Italian police force and, during the 1870s, collaborated with Prefect Malusardi in the repression of Sicilian banditry. Appointed director of Messina police headquarters in 1888, Lucchesi then became central inspector of auxiliary agents at the Ministry of the Interior. As such, he carried out several political missions in various parts of the Kingdom on behalf of the Italian government. Best known for his role in the repression of the so-called Fasci Siciliani, when, as questore of Palermo, he directed operations for the control and repression of those socialist associations, Lucchesi played a role of some importance in preparing police campaigns against the Mafia during the closing years of the nineteenth century. ² While in other parts of the Italian peninsula the so-called crisi di fine secolo (end of century crisis) coincided with the repression of street riots and the arrest of many leaders of Catholic and left-wing organizations – think of the Milan events in May 1898 ³ – in Sicily the transition between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century coincided with a series of police operations aimed at countering the Mafia phenomenon. A wide-ranging campaign also began in this period to denounce the collusion between politicians, businessmen and Mafiosi, followed a few years later by a similar campaign against the Neapolitan camorristi. ⁴

Lucchesi's report, although written at the beginning of the 1890s, clearly poses a series of questions that sit at the centre of the current historiographical debate on Mafia history. In particular, it leads to consider the relationship between the repression of crime and politics, the construction of criminal imageries and their use—consciously or otherwise—by police authorities.

These are central issues in the historiographical debate, although it should be emphasized that the relevant literature is quite recent. ⁵ Scholars have traditionally focused on the history of repressive laws in liberal Italy. ⁶ Only recently has academic interest been shown in the operational aspect of Italian crime policing, ⁷ and in the relationship between the ‘construction of evil’ in the political, social and cultural imagination, and repressive practices towards phenomena regarded as enemies of the established order. ⁸

These subjects are of great importance because the implied methodological setting aims to return police sources to their institutional, social, political, and cultural historical environment. This means analyzing police documents as evidence of the relationship between criminal manifestations and the functioning of repressive apparatuses—attempts to construct a public order in a newly-formed state in which the public civil police, the Pubblica Sicurezza (Public Security), had to deal with delinquent phenomena that were difficult to categorize within existing normative frameworks. ⁹

Indeed, an essential aspect of this relationship between criminal phenomena and repressive apparatuses was the set of regulations of the so-called preventive police, a series of rules which, by administrative means or through court actions, structured the control of individuals and groups deemed dangerous. The existing historiography has accurately reconstructed the evolution of this system and its implications. It is worth recalling, in this introduction, some aspects of this repressive system, then highlighting the issues that have been partly overlooked by historians.

From the end of the 1880s onwards, preventive police measures, first developed during the Great Brigandage and refined over the subsequent thirty years, ¹⁰ were based on the Zanardelli Criminal Code ¹¹ and the Public Security law of 1889. ¹²

There were two primary means of preventive policing: admonishment (ammonizione)— a judicial cautioning—and internal exile (domicilio coatto). The first applied to individuals who had not yet been brought before the criminal justice system. The main police authorities of the province or district could, based on reports from local police forces, denounce individuals considered socially dangerous (idlers, vagrants or ‘defamed’ persons) to the local President of the Judicial Court, thus severely restricting their personal liberty. The category of defamation could lend itself to great discretion, as, for various types of crime or for suspected involvement in criminal associations, it was applied on the basis of public voice. Individuals involved in trials for serious offences and acquitted for lack of evidence or whose guilt was unproven were also considered to be defamed. ¹³

Internal exile could be imposed on admonished persons or on those subjected to special surveillance (sorveglianza speciale), an ancillary measure provided for persons released from prison following convictions for serious crimes. ¹⁴ People sentenced to internal exile were transferred to specific places, often small islands such as Ustica. ¹⁵

The charge of associazione a delinquere (criminal association), typical of trials against late-nineteenth-century Mafiosi, and the rules governing preventive detention, were related to preventive police measures. Police enquiries into the existence of criminal associations could involve supposed Mafiosi in the preventive police repressive network, since, as mentioned, individuals acquitted due to insufficient evidence or unproven guilt could be subject to admonishment. ¹⁶ Similarly, pre-trial detention allowed authorities to detain individuals under investigation for the entire duration of inquiries, often for years. ¹⁷

In short, preventive police measures, the possibility of denouncing for admonishment those who were acquitted for insufficient evidence in trials for criminal association, and preventive imprisonment, which, for crimes of a certain gravity, allowed for arrest warrants to be issued during the preliminary investigation phase – all configured a repressive system within which forces of law and order could structure effective policies and strategies, even if these were oriented more to protecting order than to individuals’ legal protection.

While much is known about preventive police regulations and their implications, very little is known about their actual implementation by police forces on the ground. ¹⁸ The whole system depended on the way in which laws were applied by the Pubblica Sicurezza and the carabinieri, i.e., on the concrete possibilities for intervention defined by the quality of police personnel, how police forces were employed, the political guidelines of the moment and the numerical consistency of the forces engaged, rather than by functions and prerogatives. ¹⁹ By examining the action of police forces in Sicily at the end of the nineteenth century it can be verified how the state, faced with geographical areas regarded as difficult to control, sought to guarantee its presence and hegemony in contexts characterized by the existence of powers that were not always aligned with the needs of the political-administrative centres. ²⁰

This approach will allow addressing some key historiographical issues: how much do the practices adopted by police forces tell us about the possibilities for state intervention and the limits of its influence? What was the relationship between the perception of a criminal threat, police operations and the construction of judicial truth? How much did the difficulty of precisely defining the Mafia phenomenon influence policing practices in contexts where the boundary between crime and politics often appeared blurred, and where state institutions still sought consolidation thirty years after Unification? ²¹

In the following pages, focus will be on the repression of the Mafia phenomenon in the countryside around Palermo at the end of the nineteenth century, a period when, in view of the available documents and the particular attention paid to the Mafia by the authorities at the time, it is possible to address these issues through archival evidence. First, there will be an analysis of the police operations coordinated between 1896 and 1897 by Senator Giovanni Codronchi Argeli, a civil commissioner in Sicily then entrusted with supervision of the Sicilian provinces in matters such as public order, health, and provincial and municipal administration. ²² Then attention will be directed to some central episodes and aspects in the investigations conducted by police chief Ermanno Sangiorgi into the Palermo Mafia, investigations that led to the involvement of over 200 individuals in a single judicial trial for criminal association. There will also be reference to the Notarbartolo trial, i.e., the investigations and legal proceedings into the murder of Emanuele Notarbartolo, the former mayor of Palermo and former director of the Banco di Sicilia, who was killed in mysterious circumstances on 1 February 1893 – possibly on orders from deputy Raffaele Palizzolo. ²³

The Strategic use of Preventive Police Measures: Mass Arrests Between 1896 and 1897

Police officers serving in Sicily at the end of the nineteenth century found themselves involved in many repressive operations against the Mafia phenomenon. In the first phase, Giovanni Codronchi Argeli and Michele Lucchesi oversaw the police operations. The former, a right-wing senator, previously undersecretary at the Ministry of the Interior and then prefect of Milan and Naples, served as royal civil commissioner for Sicily between April 1896 and July 1897. Codronchi administered the Sicilian provinces in areas such as public order, local and provincial administration, and health for 18 months. He had extensive experience in policing and had published several essays on the subject. ²⁴ He was skilled in political interactions and perfectly capable of imposing his own line of action on other authorities involved in the management of public order. ²⁵

Michele Lucchesi, whose biography has been summarized in the introduction, has a different profile. The questore had shown great ability in mounting conspiracy plots to repress political dissent; it was he who, between 1893 and 1894, supported Crispi's thesis of the Fasci conspiracy, describing those associations as a vast socialist network prepared for revolution and ready to cede Sicily to France. He took a similar approach towards the Mafia phenomenon. While looking for evidence in Emanuele Notarbartolo's murder, Lucchesi organized invented trials against alleged criminal associations to get information on the killing; ²⁶ in 1896, he suggested preparing false evidence and letters to implicate an individual who, according to him, was responsible for the crime. ²⁷

The efforts of both men were in response to pressures from above. Between April 1896, when Codronchi arrived in Sicily, and the summer of that year, the number of crimes committed in the Sicilian provinces had increased. Public opinion and the government, then led by the Sicilian Antonio di Rudinì, ²⁸ were expressing disquiet and the opposition press was taking an interest in the matter by May, with the clear aim of discrediting the civil commissioner's work: ‘Dear Friend, wrote Rudinì, I have read your recent statistical report on crime in Sicily. It is alarming! What remedies can we find? I’ll ask the Justice Minister for help’. ²⁹

Codronchi and Lucchesi decided to act in a series of phases. First, they settled relations with the military authorities present on the island; ³⁰ then they reconstituted the patrols of soldiers and carabinieri that had operated in Sicily in previous years in provinces like Palermo, Trapani, Girgenti and Caltanissetta. ³¹ After laying these basic foundations, Codronchi and the questore began collecting information, i.e., they asked subordinates to describe the public order conditions; then, after a few weeks, they ordered Interior Ministry officers in the area to gather evidence on Mafiosi and their accomplices; and finally, they launched large-scale operations and arrests during the summer of 1896, continuing over the following months.

On 5 June 1896, Codronchi asked his subordinates to inform him about the state of public order. ³² In their replies, officers focused on a few specific points: on the one hand, they complained about a lack of funds for information services; ³³ on the other, they asked for the detached delegations, small provincial offices, to be reinforced with patrols of city guards, i.e., public civil police agents. ³⁴ Finally, as proof of a certain feeling of helplessness, they asked for exceptional measures to be adopted and for wide discretionary powers to be granted in reporting individuals for admonishment or internal exile. The sub-prefect of Termini Imerese was very clear in expressing the criteria for action that he recommended:

To seriously and permanently free the island from banditry – the sub-prefect wrote – it would be advisable to have the possibility of forcibly sending to prison all those who are considered by police authorities and the central power of the island to be favouring or supporting banditry, but with absolute discretion of judgement. In exceptional times and circumstances, exceptional measures. The good Lord, in the afterworld, will choose the good from the wicked and will consider, in our possible and involuntary mistakes, the honesty of the purpose. ³⁵

Because of his subordinates’ requests and impressions – many complained about the guarantees provided by the Zanardelli Code in favour of those reported for admonishment ³⁶ – Codronchi sent a circular letter to prefects, questori and sub-prefects at the beginning of August. He invited them to gather evidence for admonishment notifications, to mark the specific locations of Mafia and banditry, and to be ‘very careful when issuing permits to carry arms’, ³⁷ by reviewing existing permits and withdrawing ‘those given with excessive latitude’. ³⁸ Subsequently, after meeting Lucchesi, Codronchi described the public order conditions to Prime Minister di Rudinì. It was the Sicilian politician himself who suggested the criteria for action: in his official letter, di Rudinì approved the civil commissioner's intentions and allowed him ‘to order the arrest and forced removal […] of all those Mafiosi who are really such’, excluding from the operations those suspected of political crimes. ³⁹ In his personal letters, however, di Rudinì was much more explicit: he criticized the judiciary, which ‘in Italy […] protects wrongdoers out of weakness, fear, or mental defect’; he was concerned that those arrested would be released after a short time and wrote that ‘truly dangerous’ individuals ‘per fas o per nefas [lawfully or not] must not be freed’: ⁴⁰

Various means are available to us [he added in a letter dated 12 October] 1. Persuade them with the good to emigrate 2. Persuade them with severity to emigrate. 3. Send them into internal exile on my behalf, locking them up in a special workhouse, which I would set up. This last measure is very serious, but if it falls on wrongdoers […]; I believe that the public and the Chambers will approve. ⁴¹

The difficulties faced by men deployed in the area risked compromising the plans of the royal commissioner, the questore and di Rudinì. Codronchi's criteria created impediments. In fact, in September 1896, the civil commissioner underlined that suspected Mafiosi and their accomplices must be charged in accordance with Article 248 of the Penal Code, i.e., on the basis of the crime of criminal association. ⁴² Local police officers sometimes wrote that there were no associated criminal groups in their jurisdictions:

In Riesi [wrote the local police delegate] a real Mafia, with a well-founded base, does not exist. There are many suspects, some of whom team up from time to time. So far, it has not been possible to collect any evidence to suggest that they could form a criminal association. This requires elements difficult to collect in just a few days. […] I would have proceeded to the arrest of several individuals, but was held back from doing so by the thought that it would have been work in vain and of significant benefit to the criminals themselves. In fact, I would only have been able to justify the accusation based on suspicion on the part of myself and the Carabinieri. This would certainly not have been sufficient for the Judicial Authority. Then I would have been forced to release the arrested persons and they would certainly have become more daring, knowing that the Police Authority could not provide evidence of their guilt. ⁴³

In fact, some officers asked for more time to find proof, ⁴⁴ while others, even if they claimed to be able to identify possible associates, especially in the province of Palermo, ⁴⁵ feared they could not prove it before the judicial authority, and that involving some of the alleged Mafiosi would immediately assume local political significance. The mayor of Chiusa Sclafani in Palermo province resigned at the beginning of October, precisely because of the arrests ordered by the local police officer; ⁴⁶ in Cianciana, in Girgenti province, the officer's investigations inflamed party rivalries, so much so that deputy Gallo wrote to Codronchi asking him to intervene. ⁴⁷ These are just a few examples.

Given the obstacles raised by various officials, Codronchi specified in several circular letters following that of September 1896, that only local Mafia leaders should be targeted and that clues and suspicions would be considered sufficient; ⁴⁸ proof could come later, after executing the arrest warrants and apprehending the alleged Mafiosi. Codronchi further added: ‘Remember that I always praise audacious initiatives and that I will cover yours with my responsibility’. ⁴⁹

Preparation having been made, the civil commissioner gave orders to proceed with police raids. At the beginning of October, the police forces in the provinces of Palermo, Trapani, Girgenti and Caltanissetta acted simultaneously. The decision to operate concurrently was taken to avoid criminals getting wind of the action and going into hiding. In a few days, across all the provinces involved, the authorities arrested around 500 people. Over the following months, this number rose to over a thousand. ⁵⁰ In a letter sent to Codronchi on 25 November 1896, di Rudinì once again commented on events:

I am happy that public security is going well. Public opinion wants this and tolerates everything (even illegal action and violence) if we gain something. You can therefore consider that you have full power, and your hands are perfectly free. And thus, you cannot but succeed. ⁵¹

Once the first phase of the operation had begun, and while the raids continued, Codronchi gave orders to proceed with a series of targeted actions to rid the countryside of brigands. ⁵² Within a few months several bandits were caught and taken to prison. ⁵³

In fact, police operations like those coordinated by Codronchi and Lucchesi were typical. Similar campaigns had been reported in Sicily from Italian Unification and over the subsequent thirty years. ⁵⁴ It is, however, important to note the authorities’ operational logic during those months.

Recourse to the offence of criminal association appears to be functional, entrapping suspected Mafia members in the repressive network, rather than describing what local officials found.

The political-administrative centres urged the rapid adoption of measures and ordered large-scale arrests, to temporarily free Sicilian villages from individuals who were considered dangerous. The operations, in a series of targeted interventions, were also useful in reply to the general perception of public security being at the mercy of thieves and brigands. The difficulties of local police authorities were overcome by prefects, questori and civil commissioners assuming the responsibilities of their subordinates. ⁵⁵ The measures appear to have been of limited and temporary effectiveness. The adoption of such exceptional procedures – bordering on the arbitrary – suggests how much the ordinary management of public order and the daily control of the so-called dangerous social classes were problematic for the forces of law and order, even in the context of Sicily, where police corps and military units were present in force. ⁵⁶ Three analytical points should be underlined: first, repression, although restricted within certain limits in liberal state law, seemed to be an instrument for managing state relations with public opinion and with social strata considered socially dangerous. Second, the strategic use of the criminal association offence points to a characteristic of police sources – they show the interconnection between state apparatuses and populations, rather than the reality described by police and prefectural officials. ⁵⁷ Third, and given that this is an established element in the historiography, the image of an island where the state is not an important presence appears blurred. ⁵⁸

In any case, the operations coordinated by Codronchi, which continued until July 1897, laid the foundations for what would happen in subsequent years. The information gathered by the civil commissioner, especially investigations into an association of counterfeiters active in Palermo, ⁵⁹ led the Palermo police headquarters to organize a series of inquiries into the province's Mafia. This time, questori Francesco Farias and Ermanno Sangiorgi supervised police operations, together with the new prefect of Palermo, Francesco De Seta, who took over from Codronchi in summer 1897. From summer 1898 onwards, investigations sped up. The political moment was delicate: General Luigi Pelloux had replaced di Rudinì as Prime Minister after the May 1898 repression when the di Rudinì government had decided to deploy military repression to restore order, as it faced significant protests across Italy, particularly in the Milan area, as a result of a severe economic crisis. ⁶⁰ Pelloux planned to target the Sicilian criminal associations to present the country with a government ready to strike at corruption and disorder. On the one hand, he pushed for parliament to ratify the arrest of the alleged instigator of the Notarbartolo murder – during the trial's first hearing in Milan evidence emerged of the involvement of deputy Raffaele Palizzolo, previously not implicated in the judicial proceedings – on the other hand, he gave orders to De Seta to further tighten the repressive measures against the Palermo province Mafia. ⁶¹

‘These are Mafia Enigmas. Sometimes These Mafiosi are not Individuals who Assert Their Personality, but Often They act as Confidants’. ⁶² The Construction of the Sangiorgi Inquiry: Confidants, Informants, and Police Strategies

The historiography has repeatedly addressed the research coordinated by Ermanno Sangiorgi. Here, attention will be given to some aspects that have aroused less interest among researchers: the techniques and operational logic followed by the security forces. In fact, scholars have looked at the police investigations of those years as a useful tool for describing the characteristics of the nineteenth-century Mafia, basing the reliability of those enquiries on references to investigations from other periods that show similarities with Sangiorgi's reporting; and on the questionable observation that the evolution of the Sicilian Mafia in subsequent periods would exhibit apparent connections with the characteristics described by Sangiorgi. ⁶³ In this article, the aim will be reconstructing the investigative techniques adopted by the police chiefs. This allows for a better understanding of nineteenth-century police enquiries and fleshes out the framework outlined previously, in which the strategic use of preventive police measures and preventive prison by the forces of law and order was evident.

First, it is necessary to consider the biography of the two police chiefs in charge of the investigation. Not much is known about Francesco Farias. Born in Messina in 1840, he was questore in Palermo from September 1897 to August 1898. ⁶⁴ There is instead plenty of information on Ermanno Sangiorgi. Born in Riolo, Emilia-Romagna, in 1840, he joined the police in 1860, after years as a registrar in the Ravenna police offices. Before being appointed questore of Palermo in August 1898, he served in Emilia-Romagna, Calabria, Sicily, Rome, Naples, Milan, Venice, Genoa and Livorno. ⁶⁵ Sangiorgi seems to have been a dynamic man, esteemed by his superiors and engaged in the dual field of the repression of political dissent and of organized crime. In controlling, and repressing, both extreme left organizations and the Sicilian criminal networks, Sangiorgi described hierarchical secret societies, structured with laws and regulations, whose dangerousness should legitimize their repression. ⁶⁶

Farias’ and Sangiorgi's investigations began with a trial involving the association of counterfeiters discovered in 1896 by Codronchi, and with the finding in Palermo of four corpses hidden in a well inside a cave on the Laganà estate in Arenella (Palermo). These corpses, found in November 1897, were soon identified as men repeatedly reported by police authorities as criminals. On the basis of investigations lasting three years, the Palermo police headquarters involved 255 people in the proceedings ⁶⁷ . According to Farias’ and Sangiorgi's reports, ⁶⁸ the Mafia was a top-down, hierarchical and pyramidal criminal association. Its members were said to be organized in groups and sections, unified by a central committee; it was reported that the Mafia had branches in all of Palermo's suburbs and several neighbouring localities, if not the whole province: ⁶⁹

Since I took over as Head of this Police Headquarters [wrote Sangiorgi in a famous report] I have been busy […] studying the conditions of public security and the actual causes of their disturbance. It took little skill or effort to find out that in almost all Palermo's municipalities, there have long existed large and valid associations of criminals. They are connected by dependency and affiliation, forming almost one vast association. ⁷⁰

This rather typical description of the characteristics and supposed activities of the Palermo Mafia can be found in the reports presented by Sangiorgi to the judicial authorities and the Interior Ministry. These reports are an incomplete source, because Sangiorgi gave details only on those episodes considered useful for supporting his assumption that the Mafia was a unified and top-down association. ⁷¹ It is possible to go beyond what Sangiorgi recorded by cross-referencing those reports with the acts of the trial, conserved in the state Archives in Palermo, ⁷² and with the minutes of the Notarbartolo trial. In fact, the judicial enquiry into the death of the former mayor of Palermo and Sangiorgi's investigation intersect several times and the related documents reveal different aspects of the police authorities’ behaviour.

First, we should start by stating that Sangiorgi himself considered the enquiry scheme set up by the Palermo police headquarters as incomplete and difficult to uphold at trial. In his report of 21 November 1898, he emphasized his decision to denounce the ‘vast criminal association’ of the Palermo area, but he also stressed that he had known from the beginning how difficult it would be to ‘fully achieve legal proof’. ⁷³ Moreover, Sangiorgi began his investigation with information gathered by Farias, who, after the killing on 8 June 1898 of Filippo Siino, one of the main members of the alleged criminal association, had written to the king's attorney that he did not know the causes of the murder, ‘which are […] confused, multiplying, and very difficult for the authority and justice to determine and prevent’. ⁷⁴

Later, Sangiorgi would come to understand the reasons for that murder, at the centre of a Mafia war between the Giammona-Bonnura and Siino families. Apart from the information passed on by a member of the Siino family, ⁷⁵ who however never ‘intended to talk about a structured criminal association’, ⁷⁶ the questore could also rely on an extensive network of other informers. The image of a tenebroso sodalizio (dark association), organized and hierarchical, and extended over the entire Palermo countryside, clearly came from their statements and Sangiorgi and his collaborators appeared fully convinced.

Given the incomplete information that victims’ families provided to police authorities, Sangiorgi, like his predecessor Farias, relied on anonymous letters and on a dense network of confidants, as well as witnesses – sometimes reticent and difficult to find. ⁷⁷ All Public Security officials working in the Palermo police headquarters or at the various provincial offices were in contact with spies and informers. It is instructive to read what Sangiorgi wrote on 19 February 1900:

On the group of criminals of Piana dei Colli (Palermo) […] I received very important information in the enclosed anonymous letter […]. This information corresponded exactly to other information given to me by confidants, and I was particularly impressed by that part of the letter in which it is mentioned that the associates had agreed to kill a prominent figure. ⁷⁸

When conducting a police enquiry, the information gathered from confidants and anonymous letters often preceded, or rather led, the action of Public Security officers.

Landowners, Mafiosi, smugglers, convicts and other individuals lent themselves to confidences, occasionally or regularly. ⁷⁹ While much of the information was provided by local figures who, for their own ends or out of conviction, made revelations to police officers and carabinieri, there were several individuals who were in constant contact with the police during the period 1893–1901. Three categories can be easily identified. ⁸⁰

First, there were former carabinieri or ex-police officers who, at the request of the functionaries, tried to infiltrate the criminal network and be hired by suspected Mafiosi. This was the case, for instance, with a former police agent who tried unsuccessfully, on Farias’ instructions, to be accepted as a camp guard. ⁸¹

A second source of information was the prison community. Many prisoners provided allegations and accusations. Police officials could often exploit the existence of rewards, or the promise of an improvement in conditions, for providing evidence about murders. Among prisoners, the men responsible for writing letters for other convicts frequently passed on a great deal of information and news to officers. These men, who were paid by the prison management and helped illiterate prisoners to write and read correspondence, were often accused of fraud, and some were convicted of falsification. ⁸² Such, among others, was the case of the detainee Augusto Bartolani, who as a scribe – in the words of the former head of the Palermo prison guards – had manufactured letters from detainees, inventing thefts and robberies, on more than one occasion. ⁸³

A third source of information came from the Mafiosi themselves, who, under threat of punitive measures or because they were determined to target their adversaries, provided confidences. In police reports, one can glimpse a network of daily relations with criminals in Palermo and surrounding areas, a network within which the threat of measures such as admonishment and internal exile could serve as a bargaining tool. Of some interest is, for example, the case of Paolo Curia, a criminal and a pasta maker allegedly commissioned by a Mafia member to carry out an assassination. Curia, instead of fulfilling his mandate, revealed everything to the police delegate in his Palermo neighbourhood. In exchange, Curia received assurance that the admonition and special surveillance to which he had been subjected would be lifted. The police officer's promise was not kept. ⁸⁴

Anonymous letters, confidants, informers and infiltrators constituted, therefore, an instrument of central importance for the police in the gathering of information. ⁸⁵ It is clear how this could lend itself to police manipulation ⁸⁶ and how such confidences, useful for beginning an investigation, were not helpful as judicial proof. One can, in fact, perceive an informal management of public order and techniques to implicate at trial people already suspected as being Mafiosi or criminal, but around whom it was difficult to gather proof.

Through the network of confidants in prisons, in the countryside and in small villages, through statements passed on by informants or men infiltrating the suspected Mafia groups, it was possible to implicate alleged Mafiosi in trials, despite unconvincing evidence. Also, relations between police headquarters and the press had a tactical use. Farias, with the aim of influencing public opinion, passed on information to the Corriere dell’Isola, one of the main Sicilian newspapers of the time. ⁸⁷ In short, the operational logic here is similar to the one described by Francesco Benigno as ‘consolidated techniques of manipulation of public opinion and management […] of public order’. ⁸⁸

Several analytical points can be underlined. First, judicial investigations appear to have been based on a dense network of informal relations between police forces and criminals. Criminals themselves often contributed to preparing investigations, sometimes as confidants, sometimes as witnesses. All this suggests that the inclusion of delinquents within the criminal associations described by the questore of Palermo and his men was a matter of mediation: by entering the network of Ministry of the Interior informants, criminals could get reduced sentences, cash prizes or exclusion from proceedings and could actively intervene in the investigations.

Police forces could then choose who to include in the criminal groupings they described to judicial authorities. The instruments of preventive policing appear functional to regulating relations between state forces and criminals and point to the possibility of law enforcement agencies making use of repressive instruments to reaffirm state hegemony, in a context where both forces of order and criminals appeared partially in check. Police documents, and therefore also the Sangiorgi report, portray this relationship between the criminal milieux and state authorities rather than the actual character of the Mafia of the period.

This general picture – which should be further investigated – can be enriched with the examination of the profiles of confidants and informers who led Sangiorgi to denounce a political-administrative society in Villabate for criminal association. ⁸⁹ This was allegedly an autonomous Mafia association, but linked to the wider federation of the Palermo provincial Mafia. The analysis of this case study sheds more light on how the Palermo police headquarters behaved.

The Villabate Criminal Association

Sangiorgi incriminated the members of the Villabate association on 28 December 1898. The society's basic purpose was supposedly criminal. The association was politically close to deputy Raffaele Palizzolo, suspected of having ordered in 1893 the murder of Emanuele Notarbartolo, former mayor of Palermo and former director of the Banco di Sicilia, the then main Sicilian bank. According to public rumours, some of the Villabate Mafiosi were the killers of Emanuele Notarbartolo. The members of the association also had important political roles, ‘since they are the most influential voters in the population’ and supported the city mayor. ⁹⁰

The police headquarters focused on some events and some violent acts in the recent past. Of particular importance was the failed murder attempt on Matteo Filippello, a guardian of a fund belonging to deputy Palizzolo, ⁹¹ and news of a banquet organised by members of the association in April 1893. Some informers claimed that the banquet was held to celebrate a political victory; others, however, said it was organized to celebrate the murder of Emanuele Notarbartolo. The assassination attempt on Matteo Filippello came about, according to information gathered by the police, after his refusal to share the prize for the murder of Notarbartolo with his comrades. This was a rumour and difficult to confirm. ⁹²

The bond that held the group together, apart from any criminal intention, was certainly political, even if many of the members had been convicted several times. ⁹³

The information gathered by the authorities was all collected from the same group of informers: the political rivals of those implicated in the trial. ⁹⁴ Among others, there was a criminal from Villabate, who was shortly to be sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment for murder and to whom the officials promised a gun licence for confidences, which never followed. ⁹⁵

In general, the police confidants of Villabate were described as criminals or unreliable people: some of them had been convicted; ⁹⁶ others were explicitly mentioned as police informers, and it was suggested they should be met secretly; ⁹⁷ others maintained constant relations with Mafia men and criminals:

I had direct information […] from Paolo Ales […] – said General Giuseppe Mirri testifying at a public trial – [He] was what one might call a police informer, a poor devil, but I did not find him to be bad or a convicted criminal. Troia and Delisi [two other police confidants], especially the former, according to police reports, turned out to be friends of Mafiosi and criminals and this could not be otherwise. ⁹⁸

Of particular interest is Nicola Ales, one of these confidants. He was a private teacher, for several years engaged in giving lessons to some carabinieri employed in Villabate. Officials and carabinieri described him as ‘an untrustworthy man’, ⁹⁹ ‘a trickster’ ¹⁰⁰ and, just as already noted, as ‘a police informer, a poor devil’. ¹⁰¹ He was involved in local politics until 1897, ¹⁰² but then found himself forced to leave the city because of excessive debts. When he arrived in Palermo, he joined the local financial police and, in 1899, if the statements made by one of is colleagues are to be believed he revealed that the people encouraging him to make statements against the alleged criminal association were his fellow party members, other police officers’ informants and confidants. ¹⁰³

The trial against the alleged Villabate criminal association, which centred on the confessions, confidences and testimonies of such informants, ended in 1901 with a verdict of non-prosecution. ¹⁰⁴ Following the declarations of Ales and the other informers, whose trustworthiness was doubtful even to officials and carabinieri and whose links with criminal groups was clear, Sangiorgi tried to catch individuals he believed to be involved in the Palermo Mafia – close to deputy Palizzolo and rumoured to be Mafia members. The attempt failed, but the episode reveals the people who were police informers, and in what environment and political context the confidences and investigations coordinated by Palermo police officers came about.

That said, it is necessary to look closely at the course of the police enquiry coordinated by Farias and Sangiorgi. Farias’ first report on the general Palermo association, denouncing 24 individuals, was dated 16 November 1897. Further denunciations followed, but on 23 May 1899, some 255 people were acquitted – i.e., all the individuals involved in the investigation – and it was only in November of that year that the enquiry was revived, for 48 people, on the basis of police operations now firmly in Sangiorgi's hands. Other denunciations followed in subsequent months and on 15 August 1900 the king's prosecutor requested the committal for trial of 89 people. In May 1901, when the public trial finally began in the Assize Court, only 51 suspected Mafiosi were sitting on the defendants’ bench. Certainly, whether or not the extensive criminal association existed, the decision to prosecute so many Mafiosi had a clear and immediate aim and effect: many of the individuals targeted by the police detained during the preliminary investigation phase, including several alleged leaders of the Palermo Mafia, remained in prison for years.

Some of them, for whom no indictment was requested, were subjected to preventive detention for two years; others, acquitted by the Assize Court, for four years; still others – the 33 individuals who were finally convicted —remained in prison for around six years. In terms of the daily management of public order, the police authorities, by planning the trial alone, succeeded in ridding Palermo province of people considered dangerous and criminal. In any case, the police authorities succeeded in involving all suspects in the preventive police system. ¹⁰⁵ This is perhaps one of the central elements of the Sangiorgi trial: convicted or not, imprisoned for a long time or just for a few months, all the individuals involved in the proceedings suspected by the police of being Mafiosi, were caught up in the network of preventive policing. In this way, alleged Mafiosi, subjected to admonishment or special surveillance, ended up being in continuous contact with and controlled by the police. That appears to be the de facto effect – if not aim – of Palermo's police actions.

Conclusion

In these concluding remarks, the questions raised in the introduction will be developed; in particular, attention will be given to the character of the relationship between state and criminal individuals, police forces and Mafia suspects.

In general, there was a clear tendency towards a tactical use of repressive and preventive policing regulations by the public authorities. The strategic recourse to criminal charges such as criminal association, which brought with it the possibility of admonishment and internal exile even for those individuals acquitted due to insufficient evidence or simply involved in the pre-trial investigative phases, allowed the police forces to entangle suspected Mafiosi in the repressive network.

The confusion of police delegates, inspectors and carabinieri employed on the ground, who often found it difficult knowing who were Mafiosi or acquiring evidence of the existence of associated groups, was counterbalanced by the needs of the political authorities to demonstrate their ability to control phenomena considered socially dangerous. This is shown by the operations coordinated by Codronchi and Lucchesi. The raids they directed between 1896 and 1897 reveal, on the one hand, a tendency to act with measures bordering on the arbitrary – think of di Rudinì's instructions – and, on the other hand, a sense of impotence and an awareness of being unable to indulge in excessive abuse and arbitrariness because of the regulatory framework of the time. ¹⁰⁶ The new Director of Public Security, Giovanni Alfazio, wrote to Codronchi in September 1896 that, regarding the operations envisaged by Lucchesi and the civil commissioner, he had to moderate the ideas expressed by Rudinì and adapt them, at least partially, to the legislative framework. ¹⁰⁷

The strategic use of criminal and preventive police measures, which seemed to characterize the attitude of the Ministry of the Interior's upper echelons, was also among the informal bargaining tools available to local officers serving in large cities and small towns. Some episodes of the Sangiorgi trial show a dense contact network between police forces and criminals, to the extent that one might think of existential contiguity. ¹⁰⁸ Within this network, the threat of measures such as admonishment and internal exile, as well as granting or withholding gun permits, constituted a means for law enforcement agencies to obtain information and an opportunity for some criminals to escape penal sanction or involvement in criminal proceedings. This reinforces the idea that public order, and therefore also the construction of investigations against suspected Mafia associates, ‘is always the result of a composite process, in which imposition, negotiation and delegation alternate and coexist’. ¹⁰⁹

Consequently, the liberal Italian framework of policing practices appears to be founded not simply on the orderly sequence of prevention-repression, but rather on a sort of dynamic equilibrium within which, if criminality and the police both appear to be partially in check, the presence of the state is guaranteed due to the many persuasive or intimidating instruments available. It should be noted that the image of an island, Sicily, in which there were still areas where the state was not present appears nuanced. The state is everywhere, it interfaces with the population through its men and, of course, it must consider and adapt to the social conditions it encounters. There is seeming confirmation of the image of southern society outlined some years ago by Gabriella Gribaudi, in which the state is omnipresent, but takes on forms imposed by its relationship with local society and customs. ¹¹⁰

State officials and high-ranking institutional figures seem interested in strengthening a social and political order wherein control networks can be established to intervene in a repressive or mediating sense in any circumstances. The aim seems to be guaranteeing a system where interacting with state officers becomes increasingly unavoidable. It appears that the authorities were not so interested in securing a complete monopoly on violence, but rather in looking for recognition as privileged interlocutors by other local powers, social groupings and semi-public figures with extensive prerogatives and an interest in bargaining with men belonging to state institutions. ¹¹¹ Within this context, state violence and judicial repression constituted only two aspects of a system whose foundations were primarily built on bargaining, mediation and compromise between social groups, criminals, politicians and public officers. The state, compared to other local powers, appeared as the entity capable of mobilizing and coordinating the use of violence to a greater extent, without having or claiming complete control over it. In this sense, the existence of social groups capable of mobilizing violence, whether criminal, political or both, did not necessarily constitute a threat to the maintenance of order and to the possibility of state mediation and hegemony. ¹¹²

Another analytical point should be added. In fact, the definition of who among the alleged Mafiosi was to be involved in judicial proceedings was also a matter for negotiation. This was a particularly critical issue as, in the Sicilian context, the boundary between criminality and politics was blurred.

When considering police investigations and the profiles of police confidants—for example, the Villabate informers—one discovers that the forces of law and order operated on slippery terrain, where criminality was difficult to define, where the boundaries between political and criminal activities were unclear, and where, if the identification of criminal behaviour appeared immediate, the identification of associated groupings was much more complex, given confidences and reports of dubious reliability. ¹¹³

In this respect, using the imagery of the sect, and in particular the idea of large and extremely dangerous vertical associations, allowed the authorities to bridge the gap between a reality that was difficult to define and the need to strike at phenomena such as the Sicilian Mafia. ¹¹⁴ It cannot be discounted, of course, that more or less fluid forms of association might in fact have existed in specific places, times and circumstances; however – and this is the point – it was difficult to understand their characteristics and, above all, to relate them to the legislative schemes of the period.

The Sangiorgi report, therefore, should be considered more as an important episode of the repressive policies adopted during the liberal era than a faithful description of the Mafia historical reality in nineteenth-century Sicily. It tells who the targets were in that precise historical moment – that is, the criminals close to certain political networks. The authorities relied, in the definition of associative profiles, on confidants and infiltrators who could also be ascribed to criminal and Mafia milieux. Simply put, police chose who to repress or not.

In order to verify daily police and judicial practices towards those who, from time to time, were socially and politically identified as Mafiosi, we need to extend the research and widen the chronology. This remains to be done; as far as the period between 1880 and 1914 is concerned, the historiography has focused only on key moments in this history of control and repression. ¹¹⁵

In conclusion, if the repressive operations in late-nineteenth-century Sicily focus on crime and criminals, they instead reveal the police force and its difficulties, ¹¹⁶ and a state capable of guaranteeing a precarious order in a context marked by the presence of multiple powers and by various forms of violence, political or criminal.