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- A Brief History of the Concept “Mafia” Mafia is a word of uncertain origin that, starting from the mid-nineteenth century, began to be used by government officials in Sicily as a synonym of the associazione di malfattori (that is, association of evildoers), which was then the main offense of criminal organization.
- Mafia Organizations in Italy. Three organizations or better sets of organizations are nowadays primarily referred to as mafia in Italy. The first and most prominent is the Sicilian Cosa Nostra (“our thing”), a confederation of about 150 groups, mostly located in the western part of Sicily, more specifically the provinces of Palermo (the region’s capital), Trapani, and Agrigento (Ministero dell’Interno 2012b, pp.
- Longevity. As already mentioned, longevity and organizational and cultural complexities constitute the first two defining characteristics of mafia organizations—and both are fully met by Cosa Nostra and the ’Ndrangheta.
- Organizational and Cultural Complexity. Cosa Nostra and ’Ndrangheta’s internal structure and cultural apparatus of legitimation have few parallels in the world of crime for their complexity and sophistication, beyond the other so-called mafia-type criminal organizations (Paoli 2002; i.e., Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza, Italian-American Cosa Nostra, and the Russian vory v zakone; see the chapters of Chin, Hills, Albanese, and Volkov, respectively).
Nov 1, 2015 · The Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta, and the Neapolitan camorra—in short, southern Italian mafia organizations—are frequently seen as the epitome of organized crime. This essay argues, however, that southern Italian mafia organizations are an exception in the panorama of organized crime in most developed countries, and Western Europe in particular.
Jun 2, 2019 · Are mafia groups and organized crime groups the same? Do mafia groups act the same way as organized crime groups? What policies exist to combat the phenomenon? These are of the questions that are r...
- Ana Guerreiro
- 2019
Jan 27, 2023 · In the years that followed, data shows a radical decrease in the number of mafia-related homicides, from 718 in 1991 to just 28 in 2019. In 2020, there were 271 homicides in Italy, compared with ...
- Gianmarco Daniele
- Territorial Sovereignty
- Ties with Society
- Secrecy and Trust
- Movements of Groups and Activities
- The Spectrum
Territorial sovereignty is quintessentially linked to both organised crime and mafia. On the one side, to control the territory means to exercise a policing function, normally attributed to the state. The Weberian theory of state’s monopoly of violence as sole legitimate exercise of control over the territory finds here its manifestation. If crimin...
Ties with society can be strong or weak, depending on a number of aspects, among which, for example, the (cultural) origin of the criminal group, its composition, its recruitment strategies and its connections with various other sectors of societies. The strength of ties is one of the core topics of social network analysis (Carrington, 2011; Campan...
The mafia “symptomatology” on the OC–mafia spectrum requires – together with a flexible conceptualisation of the control of the territory, cultivation of political proximity, trafficking in favours and connivance rather than infiltration – also the protection from “death” (of the group) and the assurance that, no matter what hits the group, the rep...
Issues of secrecy and trust are problematised even further when criminal groups or individuals belonging to criminal groups move or their activities are poly-territorial. As we will see in more detail in the rest of the book, mobility of criminal groups, either in terms of poly-territoriality of criminal activities or in terms of mafia migration, i...
Figure 2.1represents a more synthetic version of the OC–mafia spectrum, with the various keywords presented so far. A group on the most extreme edge of the mafia side will be a group best defined by its structure; physical and spatial/institutional control of the territory, which leads to residual use of violence; a specific cultural dimension; pol...
- Anna Sergi
- 2017
Jul 24, 2023 · Organised crime casts a long shadow, driving violence and an illicit economy. But our research has uncovered some more subtle dimensions to its influence, too. We’ve found that organised crime ...
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May 18, 2015 · A Home Office study of criminal profiles of organised criminals in the UK has shown that the vast majority (87%) were UK nationals. While the majority had been convicted for drug-related offences ...
