IN THE crime movie “The Italian Job” Charlie, played by Michael Caine, upsets a mafia boss by trespassing on his turf to steal gold. The plot is entertaining, but absurd: the film is set in Turin in 1969, when organised crime in Italy was confined to the downtrodden south.No longer. On December 10th police arrested 61 people in an operation against the ’Ndrangheta, the mafia from Calabria, the toe of Italy. Such dragnets are common. But this one was launched from Perugia, the capital of Umbria, a region famed for beautiful hilltop towns and Renaissance art—not for mobsters.Operation Fourth Step was the most startling sign yet of the pervasiveness of Italy’s traditional mafias. Police found evidence that Calabrian gangsters settled in Umbria had planned a murder and violently intimidated shopkeepers, builders and others.Of all Italy’s main organised-crime groups, the ’Ndrangheta has the deepest roots outside the south. A six-year investigation culminating in 2010 found that its presence in the industrial north was extensive. More than 150 people were arrested.There are two causes of the spread of Italy’s mafias. One is that richer parts of the country offer more possibilities for laundering the proceeds of crime. The other is a 1956 law that allowed mafiosi to be uprooted from their normal surroundings and sent north. In Umbria investigators point to…