Glossary entry
Omertà
oh-mair-TAH
Definition
oh-mair-TAH
The code of silence. An absolute prohibition on cooperating with the authorities or acknowledging the organisation's existence, applying to members and, in principle, to anyone living under its influence.
“Omertà held for forty years and then broke almost completely once the government could offer a witness a new name and a pension.”
The word is Sicilian and older than any American family. It carried an idea of manliness — that a man handles his own affairs and does not run to the state — as much as a threat.
What broke it was not fear of prison but arithmetic. The racketeering statutes of 1970 made sentences long enough that a life term became realistic, and the witness protection programme created for the first time a credible alternative. Joseph Valachi in 1963 was an aberration. By the 1980s, informing had become a normal career outcome.