Organizations like the Yakuza, 'Ndrangheta, Cosa Nostra, the Irish Mafia, etc, are part of many countries, to bigger or smaller fashion.
But to someone from those countries, what do you think was the original/historical cause for such organizations to develop?
My country - Portugal - has some degree of presence of these organizations but, to my knowledge, we never developed our domestic version of a crime syndicate. And we are not a bunch of choir boys. Something just kept things from forming. And that intrigues me.
So, what is the understanding of someone from a country where the organizations exist?


Organized crime is in basically every single country in the world
But do all have homegrown societies? My country, to my knowledge, does not nor has ever had such organizations. We started getting some degree of them when we had a large influx of eastern europe imigrants that were followed by criminal organizations but they don’t have enough footing here to become influent.