I don't have personal experience with it, maybe it's all fantasy, but a popular trope in mafia stories is the mafia serving as a parallel or backup government

I don't have personal experience with it, maybe it's all fantasy, but a popular trope in mafia stories is the mafia serving as a parallel or backup government to otherwise law-abiding people. For instance, The Godfather opens with a man, not part of the mob, asking the Godfather for vigilante justice because the American criminal system failed to punish the man who disfigured his daughter.