Glossary entry
Sit-down
SIT-down
Definition
SIT-down
A formal meeting called to settle a dispute between members or families, held before an agreed senior figure whose decision both sides accept in advance.
“The two crews were told to take it to a sit-down rather than settle it in the street.”
The sit-down is the mechanism that made the Commission workable. A dispute over territory, a debt or an insult would be brought before a capo, an underboss or, if it involved separate families, a neutral senior man.
Refusing the outcome was itself a serious offence, because the alternative was the open warfare that everyone present had a commercial interest in avoiding.