The pentiti of the Sicilian mafia in the 1930s

Mussolini had declared that Fascism, through the anti-mafia campaign entrusted to Cesare Mori, prefect of Palermo, in the second half of the 1920s, had conclusively liberated Sicily from the mafia. However, from the early 1930s a new deterioration of public order on the island was evident, and the regime was forced to launch a second, and much less publicised, repression of this phenomenon. In the course of its careful investigations the body given responsibility for pursuing this repression, the Ispettorato Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza per la Sicilia, compiled a series of reports, including the Processo verbale di denunzia relating to the area around Palermo. With a level of detail never seen before, these reports described the structure, organisation and dynamics of mafia groups. This was possible because police officers had available members of the mafia groups themselves – genuine pentiti – who had decided to make disclosures to the authorities.