The Once and Future Mafia

Last Tuesday morning, in the Sicilian town of Corleone no less, Italian police moved in on Italy's most wanted man, top boss of the Cosa Nostra, the chief of chiefs, the "capo di capi."

After forty-three years of eluding capture, Bernardo Provenzano was grabbed, in a farmhouse a mile outside the town that gave Hollywood's Godfather movies their family name.

Yesterday, the Corleone town council declared April 11th "Liberation Day," the "end of a long dark night." But the Mafia story is not over in Italy, and globally organized crime now has many faces.

Hear about the Mafia and organized crime in an era of globalization and terror.

Guests:

Gabe Kahn, Rome Correspondent for the Wall Street Journal;
Simonetta Agnello-Hornby, author of novels "The Almond Picker" and "Zia Marquesa";
Letizia Paoli, Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, author of "Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style," and a consultant to the Italian Organized Crime Task Force

Peter Reuter, Professor of Criminology at the University of Maryland, Senior Economist at the Rand Corporation in Washington and author of "Disorganized Crime: The Economics of the Visible Hand";
Federico Varese, Lecturer in Criminology at Oxford University and author of "The Russian Mafia: Private Protection in a New Market Economy."