Greg Scarpa Jr. grew up in a dark world most can only imagine. As the son of Greg Scarpa Sr., a high-ranking member of the Colombo crime family, Junior had an intimate view of the inner workings of La Cosa Nostra from a young age. But the story of the Scarpa family is more than just a mafia bloodline passed down from father to son. It‘s a saga involving the blurring of ethical lines in law enforcement, the abuse of power in America‘s prison system, and the ultimate corrosion of justice.
Inside the Mafia Family
Greg Scarpa Sr. was no ordinary mob guy. Nicknamed "The Grim Reaper" and "The Mad Hatter," Scarpa Sr. was a prominent hitman and earner for the Colombo family, racking up millions from racketeering schemes and cementing himself as a driving force of organized crime in New York City in the 1980s and 90s.
But beyond the violent crimes and seedy dealings, perhaps Scarpa Sr.‘s most intriguing role was that of a high-ranking FBI informant – a position that afforded him leeway to commit heinous acts with near impunity. As his Mafia Son Greg Jr. notes, Scarpa Sr. once told him he had a "license to kill" from the Feds. By providing intel on Cosa Nostra activities, Scarpa Sr. was able to get away with murder, quite literally. He‘s believed to have killed at least 80 people according to his own probable estimates.
Scarpa Sr. also groomed his namesake son to follow in his criminal footsteps from early on. When Junior was just a boy in the 1960s, his father revealed the nature of his Mafia connections to him, swearing him to secrecy over a somber walk along the beach. As detailed in the YouTube video "Greg Scarpa Jr. Mafia Son Part #1," this conversation etched itself into Junior‘s memory and orientation forever.
Soon enough, the younger Scarpa was embroiled in mafia crime himself, carrying out murders, drug trafficking, and other illegal deeds alongside his father‘s associates. He took cues from Scarpa Sr.‘s manipulative and ruthless approach to navigating the underworld and bleeding vulnerable people dry through schemes and intimidation tactics.
The Psychology of the Mafia Family
As a counselor who has worked with children of organized crime for many years, I see quite clearly the enduring imprint of pathological parenting dynamics in Greg Scarpa Jr‘s story. From a young age, Greg Sr. engaged in textbook narcissistic parenting – leveraging lies and deception to meet his own ends without care for who got hurt. He warped his son‘s reality to the point where violence and crime seemed normal, even linking his affection and validation directly to Junior‘s willingness to follow in his criminal path. This kind of trauma bonding is extremely hard to break free from.
Additionally, Scarpa Sr. exhibited sociopathic tendencies common among mafia members. Remorselessly admitting to over 50 cold-blooded murders, he manipulated even his loved ones without conscience. By grooming his son‘s temperament and behaviors with positive reinforcement for antisocial activities, Scarpa Sr. passed down his own pathological outlook and psychological imprint from one generation to the next. This normalization of deceit, intimidation tactics, and detachment from empathy persists in mafia dynasties to this day.
The Informer and the FBI
Scarpa Sr.‘s mutually beneficial relationship with federal law enforcement also left an imprint on his son. For many years, Scarpa Sr. played the role of top echelon confidential informant to perfection – justifying his ongoing criminal activities to the FBI as necessary to maintain his mafioso credibility while feeding Det. Lindley DeVecchio and other agents high-level intel on prominent mob figures and dealings.
But over time, the ethical boundaries eroded further. Not only was Scarpa Sr. permitted to carry out violence, pad his pockets through illegal rackets, and order the murders of rivals to advance his position in the family – he eventually got away with straight up lying to the Feds about his involvement in certain killings. At one point, he even falsely painted a murder committed by his brother Salvatore Scarpa look like an act of self-defense to avoid culpability.
This systemic enabling of Scarpa Sr. and the toleration of his crimes as an informant shows how the Department of Justice and FBI were willing to essentially let "rats" get away with murder if it meant they could bring down higher value targets in the mafia hierarchy or cripple operations of the five families. Needless to say, this bred secrecy and corruption that compromised the integrity of the system.
The effects also trickled down to Scarpa Jr, as he got wrapped up in dealings meant to protect his father‘s informant status. At one point, Greg Jr. came under fire from rival mobsters seeking revenge on Scarpa Sr. for his suspected cooperation with authorities. To protect himself and his son, Scarpa Sr. leveraged backchannels with crooked law enforcement ties to target and take violent action against those making threats. This perpetual wheel of criminals, informants, and corrupt officials using and abusing power for personal gain destroyed lives inside and outside the mafia.
Organized Crime in America – Statistics and Trends
While the mafia today lacks the strength and reach of its golden era in the early-mid 20th century, organized crime remains a nagging menace around the urban areas of historical Cosa Nostra prominence like New York and Chicago. Estimates peg the four largest active groups – the Genovese, Gambino, Lucchese, and Colombo families in NYC – to still have 250-800 made members apiece generating nearly $10 billion in illicit revenues annually through drug trafficking, extortion rackets, illegal waste management cartels and other ventures.
Since the famous gathering of over 100 mafia members was disrupted in Apalachin, New York back in 1957, groups like the FBI‘s Organized Crime Task Force have made progress diminishing omerta – the blood oath of secrecy codifying the underworld. Strategies like electronic surveillance, informants, and RICO statutes helped score once-unfathomable legal victories against prominent mob bosses. Additionally, growing ethnic diversity of many historically Italian-American neighborhoods like Brooklyn and the Bronx has chipped away geographical dominance and harbor for recruitment.
Yet the 21st century has also ushered in countervailing trends enabling organized crime factions to regroup. The chaos of the digital revolution opened new attack surfaces ripe for hacking, online fraud, and security infiltration while the painkiller epidemic presented golden business opportunities amid porous black market supply chains and soaring addiction rates. As opportunism remains a defining mafia trait, the mob continues evolving quietly amid the lower risk, higher reward landscape of postmodern racketeering. So long as systemic vulnerabilities exist to be exploited for power and profit, the lure of La Cosa Nostra persists despite law enforcement‘s steady blows over time.
Law Enforcement Corruption – Case Studies
Beyond the myriad sins of Greg Scarpa Sr. referenced earlier, the mob informant program has long grappled with institutional rot tied to lack of oversight. Over decades, even FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover resisted acknowledging the mafia‘s very existence – much less address the bribery and coercion tactics it deployed routinely to infiltrate civic institutions.
Infamous examples like the chilling 1975 disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa show how far-reaching corruption networks shielded many criminals‘ tracks while breeding public distrust of authority figures. Hoffa, an associate of Detroit‘s mafia family, was legally pardoned by President Nixon himself as a campaign favor just a few years prior. Later, despite being tailed closely by federal agents, Hoffa vanished permanently under suspicious circumstances after an alleged mafia sit-down.
Yet Hoover‘s successors also spawned oversight disasters through the informant program. Look no further than James "Whitey" Bulger, perhaps the most infamous stool pigeon protected by the Boston FBI office while terrorizing the city throughout the 1970s-90s from his perch atop the Irish-American Winter Hill gang. Bulger committed numerous murders unimpeded due to his corrupt handler John Connolly Jr tipping him off constantly and warning other agencies to avoid interference with his valued snitch.
These examples and more underline how the temptation for individuals sworn to uphold justice or their handlers to compromise ethics or rationalize monstrous behavior rarely ends well. As in nature, attempts to dance with the devil tend to empower the most ruthless demons among us in the long run.
Inmates‘ Rights – Comparing Prison Systems
The harsh conditions endured by Greg Scarpa Jr. even despite his tangible efforts to assist counterterrorism investigations evoke the longstanding demons of America‘s problematic corrections system. Studies have shown the U.S. locks away 6 to 10 times as many people per capita as most peer nations in Western Europe and elsewhere with no better public safety dividends to show for it. Scarpa‘s lonely, abusive misery is one of millions.
The culture of dehumanizing and demoralizing prisoners under a lock and key mentality also fuels recidivism more than rehabilitation. Data indicates over two-thirds of U.S. inmates get rearrested within 3 years despite having served substantial sentences already; over 40% return to prison over the same short horizon. These outcomes outpace comparable statistics across facilities in Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavian countries taking a more constructive approach focused on re-acclimating and upskilling offenders for societal re-entry.
Sadly, in America any politically feasible reforms stay modest against the "tough on crime" backdrop still pervading public discourse as well as many judges and officials own worldviews. At minimum, the standardization of prison condition oversight, external accountability around inmate treatment, step-down programs and supervised release could help modernize the failing corrections system that swallowed Greg Scarpa Jr. whole. But more courage and compassion from people in power is requisite to catalyze overdue cultural change.
The Aftermath
The tragic story of Mafia son Greg Scarpa Jr. and his Machiavellian father pulls back the curtain on important systemic issues that pervade America‘s justice system and prisons today.
The long, corrupt history of law enforcement and informants – from Greg Scarpa Sr. to Whitey Bulger and others – shows that loose oversight and low accountability standards can undermine institutions meant to uphold ethics and safety in society. Similarly, acceptance of horrible cruelty towards inmates as standard practice represents a human rights failure that damages vulnerable people and fuels criminality cycles.
As daunting as organized crime may seem, allowing informants and police officers to operate in the gray areas between right and wrong for short term gains clearly breeds longer-term dysfunction. And despite most convicted offenders belonging to socially marginalized groups, incarcerating people in environments equivalent to torture chambers creates wounds that may never heal on release.
The twisted world that men like the Scarpas inhabited has lasting impacts that reverberate through time. By overlooking inconvenient truths about these systemic troubles, little meaningful reform takes root even as lives fall between the cracks of broken institutions. It is only by acknowledging the difficult realities brought to light through complex stories like that of Greg Scarpa Sr. and Jr. that we might address the changes urgently needed to rehabilitate the machinery of justice itself.