Mafia Members Research Articles

Between psychopathy and deviant socialization: A close look at the mafia men

The Italian mafia organizations represent a subculture with values, beliefs and goals that are antithetical to and undermining of the predominant society. The conduct of individual members includes such extreme violence for material gain, it may at least superficially suggest a severe personality disorder. Since the first edition of the DSM and into the 21st century, various terms have been used, sometimes interchangeably, but over time inconsistently, to designate the mentality and practices of mafia members. Only recently has the psychology of mafia members become a focus of serious scientific study. Following broader national multicenter research, the present study aimed at investigating the possible differences in psychopathy between those mafia associates who had been convicted only of mafia association (Group A, bosses), and those who were also convicted of violent crimes (Group B, soldiers). The Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) was administered to n = 48 male inmates convicted of mafia association (Mage 45.0 years, SD 10.9, range 20–80 years); Group A consisted of n = 26 (54%) subjects, Group B n = 22 (46%). Most of the sample (73%) did not manifest psychopathy (PCL-R ≥ 25) nor Mann-Whitney U test disclosed significant differences in the total PCL-R scores between the study groups. We found significantly higher scores of PCR-R factor 1 (interpersonal / affective) in the members of the mafia association also convicted of violent crimes (PCL-R F1, group A: 5.8 ± 3.7; group B: 7.9 ± 3.5; p < 0.05), this difference appeared explainable on the basis of a higher component of affective psychopathy. These initial results add to the limited literature on mafia and psychopathy and seem to suggest the existence of a specific component of psychopathy in the subgroup of mafiosi with overtly violent conduct.

REPRESENTATION OF LOVE IN THE GODFATHER

Research done in Italian prisons showed that the convicted mafia members exhibited significant antisocial traits but their capacity for emotional connection is higher than other imprisoned offenders in Italy. In another research, Schimmenti (2014) concluded that mafioso is more sensitive, family orientated, and less selfish than other murderers. In popular culture particularly in movies, mafioso is portrayed as callous and remorseless. Knowing that they can have emotional relationships, this study analyzes the types of love that are revealed in 'The Godfather', a mob movie that was nominated for 28 Oscars and won 9. The Ancient Greek has four different words for love: Agape, Eros, Philia, and Storge. This concept of love is popularized by CS Lewis and will be used as the basis of analysis. This research focused on the main character, Michael Corleone, and examined which type of love he expressed and to whom it poured out: His own family or his mafia family. The movie portrayed that Michael was only capable of loving his father and his daughter. He could express Storge yet was unable to have affection towards his wife (Eros) thus automatically did not have the capacity to love unconditionally (Agape). He also had a hard time to have close relationship with anyone and did not love his brothers or sister, either (Philia).

Bellocchio’s Histories, Personal and Public

In The Traitor (2019) and Exterior Night (2022), Marco Bellocchio revisits traumatic and violent episodes in Italy’s recent past. The first is a feature film about the round-up of Sicilian mafia members in the 1980s and their retaliatory attack on the Italian state. The second is a six-part television series about the abduction and murder in 1978 of politician Aldo Moro as lived by his family, political colleagues and the terrorists who captured him. Bellocchio’s nonfiction Marx Can Wait (2021) also evokes a trauma, in this case a personal one: the legacy of his twin brother’s suicide in 1968 on himself and his family. This article examines Bellocchio’s techniques of incorporating archive images and footage, including from his own earlier films, as well as his use of dream and fantasy sequences, as ways of situating himself as an older man in relation to that past and of processing traumatic memories.

Is your neighbor your friend? Scan methods for spatial social network hotspot detection

AbstractGIS analyses use moving window methods and hotspot detection to identify point patterns within a given area. Such methods can detect clusters of point events such as crime or disease incidences. Yet, these methods do not account for connections between entities, and thus, areas with relatively sparse event concentrations but high network connectivity may go undetected. We develop two scan methods (i.e., moving window or focal processes), EdgeScan and NDScan, for detecting local spatial‐social connections. These methods capture edges and network density, respectively, for each node in a given focal area. We apply methods to a social network of Mafia members in New York City in the 1960s and to a 2019 spatial network of home‐to‐restaurant visits in Atlanta, Georgia. These methods successfully capture focal areas where Mafia members are highly connected and where restaurant visitors are highly local; these results differ from those derived using traditional spatial hotspot analysis using the Getis–Ord Gi* statistic. Finally, we describe how these methods can be adapted to weighted, directed, and bipartite networks and suggest future improvements.

Women and men of mafia between traditional cultural contexts and new social roles.

The Italian mafia organizations represent a subculture with values, beliefs, and goals that are antithetical to and undermining of the predominant society. The conduct of individual members includes such extreme violence for material gain, it may at least superficially suggest a severe personality disorder. Since the first edition of the DSM and into the 21st century, various terms have been used, sometimes interchangeably, but over time inconsistently, to designate the mentality and practices of mafia members. Only recently has the psychology of mafia members become a focus of serious scientific study. For the first time, investigators for the present study applied instruments, including the PCL-R, to examine for character psychopathology and specifically degrees of psychopathy in male and female mafia members, 20 female and 21 male members. Results showed some gender difference with the women having a higher score on Factor 1, in contrast to men who showed a lower score. Psychopathy and personality disorder were not found to be associated with membership in the mafia for either gender. Some psychopathic traits and gender differences warrant further research. Meanwhile these findings are consistent with a mentality characterized by beliefs and practices determined by a deviant culture rather than psychopathology.

Vertical organizations, flat networks: Centrality and criminal collaboration in the Italian-American Mafia

While criminal organizations often feature hierarchical positions, scholars debate the extent to which networks of informal collaboration among criminals reflect such hierarchies. This research uses historical data on collaboration involving more than 700 criminals across 24 Italian-American Mafia families and applies network regression models and simulations to determine whether mafiosi of similar centrality-based status were more likely to be criminal associates than mafiosi of dissimilar status. Rather than forming vertical collaborations linking mafia members into a centralized, hierarchical network structure, we find that mafiosi collaborated disproportionately more with colleagues of similar status. While network centrality predicted tie formation, formal rank in an organizational chart generally did not. Knowledge simply of a covert organization’s formal structure may not translate to understanding “on-the-ground” collaborations.

In nomine Diaboli: The ideologies of organized crime

This article addresses the topic of ideologies underlying organized crime using interviews with individuals living in Mafia-affected territories. High school and university students produced narratives that reflected their ideologies about organized crime, which were duly compared with the ideologies endorsed by Mafia members in televised interviews. This comparison has yielded several similarities, namely the presence of amoralism, familism, verticalism and religious relativism, but, at the same time, substantial differences in the form of anti-reductionism, anti-normalism and anti-victimism (vis-à-vis reductionism, normalism and victimism). The thrust of this study is that ideologies about organized crime are, to a large extent, shared by members of organized crime and outsiders living in Mafia-affected areas.

To racketeer among neighbors: spatial features of criminal collaboration in the American Mafia

ABSTRACT The American Mafia is a network of criminals engaged in drug trafficking, violence and other illegal activities. Here, we analyze a historical spatial social network (SSN) of 680 Mafia members found in a 1960 investigatory dossier compiled by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The dossier includes connections between members who were ‘known criminal associates’ and members are geolocated to a known home address across 15 major U.S. cities. Under an overarching narrative of identifying the network’s proclivities toward security (dispersion) or efficiency (ease of coordination), we pose four research questions related to criminal organizations, power and coordination strategies. We find that the Mafia network is distributed as a portfolio of nearby and distant ties with significant spatial clustering among the Mafia family units. The methods used here differ from former methods that analyze the point pattern locations of individuals and the social network of individuals separately. The research techniques used here contribute to the body of non-planar network analysis methods in GIScience and can be generalized to other types of spatially-embedded social networks.

Partners in Crime: Evidence from Recidivating Inmates

Studies that estimate criminal peer effects need to define the reference group. For peer effects that develop in prison, researchers have used the amount of time inmates overlap in prison, sometimes in combination with nationality, to define such groups. Yet, there is often little discussion about such assumptions, which could potentially have important effects on the estimates of peer effects. We show that the date of rearrest of inmates who spend time together in prison signals, with some error, co-offending, and can thus be used to measure reference groups. Exploiting recidivism data on inmates released after a mass pardon with a simple econometric model which adjusts the estimates for the misclassification errors, we document homophily in peer group formation with regard to age, nationality, and degrees of deterrence. There is no evidence of homophily with respect to education, employment status, and crime types. Unsurprisingly, mafia criminals have a high tendency of partnering up, though not only with other mafia members.

Life-Course Criminal Trajectories of Mafia Members:

Through a novel data set comprising the criminal records of 11,138 convicted mafia offenders, we compute criminal career parameters and trajectories through group-based trajectory modeling. Mafia o...

Life-Course Criminal Trajectories of Mafia Members

Through a novel data set comprising the criminal records of 11,138 convicted mafia offenders, we compute criminal career parameters and trajectories through group-based trajectory modeling. Mafia offenders report prolific and persistent careers (16.1 crimes over 16.5 years on average), with five distinct trajectories (low frequency, high frequency, early starter, moderate persistence, high persistence). While showing some similarities with general offenders, the trajectories of mafia offenders also exhibit significant differences, with several groups offending well into their middle and late adulthood, notwithstanding intense criminal justice sanctions. These patterns suggest that several mafia offenders are life-course persisters and career criminals and that the involvement in the mafias is a negative turning point extending the criminal careers beyond those observed in general offenders.

When the mafia comes to town

This paper investigates the diffusion of organized crime in new areas by examining a legal practice in effect in Italy between 1956 and 1988, namely the power for the authorities to force mafiosi to relocate to another town. Using the variation in the number of relocated mafia members according to destination provinces in a difference-in-differences setting, I find no conclusive evidence on crime and a very robust positive impact on employment in the construction industry. I show that the effect is driven primarily by provinces that had a low ex-ante level of financial development, suggesting that mafias take advantage of investment opportunities in the construction sector that are left unexploited due to liquidity constraints.

Mafia, money-laundering and the battle against criminal capital: the Italian case

PurposeThis paper aims to look at the case of Italy, which clearly stands out in its relationship with organised crime. The recognition that money is the “lifeblood” of OC has resulted in the implementation of what we can refer to as the anti-money laundering (AML) regime, which backs the systematic targeting of mafia assets and the application of severe obstacles to the concealment of dirty money through increased financial surveillance. This paper discusses the financialisation of counter-mafia strategies, with the purpose of questioning the extent to which this system has been delivering what it promised.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is divided into three chapters. The first chapter looks at the relationship between Italian mafia and dirty money. The second chapter discusses the rationale and pillars of the AML regime. Finally, the last section examines and discusses recent evidence of the outcome of AML policies, by looking at figures as reported by relevant entities, such as the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), Europol, the Italian Ministry of Interior and the Direzione Investigativa Anti-Mafia (DIA).FindingsEvidence suggests that financial surveillance, the first pillar of the AML regime, is much costlier than it is beneficial to society. Reporting of suspicions has rocketed in the past years, bringing very little change to yearly ML convictions, and being only marginally helpful in mafia-related investigations, confiscations and arrests. The confiscation of assets from mafia members, i.e. the second pillar of the AML regime, has proven to be effective in gaining control over large sums and goods. However, more research is needed around the question of confiscated asset-management and desirable re-investment opportunities.Originality/valueAs the AML regime gains in prominence internationally, it is of great value to assess its achievements so far. This is especially true of a country like Italy, which suffers from a long-standing mafia dominance. This paper represents a modest initial inquiry, which will hopefully be complemented by future research to come to an in-depth understanding of the value and limitations of an AML regime in fighting OC.

Polskie i niemieckie jednostki specjalne w policji – przyczynek do analizy porównawczej

In Poland and Germany, security, as part of the topics of politics and science, is gaining more and more attention in society due to terrorist attacks which can be expected anywhere and at any time. So far nobody has found a remedy to terrorism, which is a plague for present-day societies. Yet we are still waiting for it. States are trying to increase internal security and this is a priority for special police units in both Poland and Germany.Special forces fulfilling counter-terrorism duties have the following common features: an organisational structure (created according to a special pattern: there is a combat section and a support section), a selection process (a selection of candidates to the combat section), as well as specialist equipment and weapons. Among German units is GSG9 – one of the most important anti-terrorist groups in the world. Similar duties are fulfilled by SEK (Spezialeinsatzkommando) units. GROM is the main anti-terrorist unit in Poland, and police units include the Office for Anti-Terrorism Operations (BOA KGP), the Autonomous Anti-Terrorism Policy Unit (SPAP) and the executive units of CBŚP, destined for so-called hard actions. Their daily work involves finding and arresting armed criminals, kidnappers, mafia members, armed gangsters and freeing hostages. Special police units are, to some extent, the ultima ratio of a state which is able to defend itself. In the political and legal system, violence is subject to legal rules, enforced and sanctioned. It should serve to hold physical security and order and also raise the consciousness of societies.

The cultural foundations of political support in eastern Sicily: Mafia clans, political power and the Lombardo case

From 2008 Sicily’s president was Raffaele Lombardo, leader of theMovimento per le Autonomie(MpA), a party founded by politicians who were already well established in the city of Catania and its province. In the summer of 2012 Lombardo’s government was forced to resign following an investigation that exposed the connections between the president and Mafia families in eastern Sicily. This article draws on two ethnographic studies carried out in Catania between 2009 and 2013: in describing the political behaviour and power relations between voters, local councillors and MpA executive officers, the research examined the tendency to internalise the widely understood narrative about politics and patronage in Sicily that Lombardo and his colleagues embodied. By relating ethnographic data to the legal documents showing the links between MpA leaders and Cosa Nostra bosses, I argue that social and cultural support for the party will have included support from local Mafia members.

The Mafia, La Raza, and the Spanish-Language Press Coverage of the 1891 Lynchings in New Orleans

On October 15, 1890, New Orleans police superintendent David C. Hennessy was shot six times in the French Quarter as he headed home from work. A dying Hennessy uttered his captain that his murderers were Dagos, using an epithet for the growing Italian population in the city. With headlines claiming Hennessy was Ambuscaded and a Victim of the Vendetta, the local newspaper blamed the mafia for the murder, giving fodder mounting stereotypes of Italian immigrants. In the coming weeks local law enforcement indicted nineteen Italians, allegedly mafia members, for their supposed involvement in the murder. When a trial of nine Italians ended without convictions on March 13, 1891, outrage ignited in New Orleans. The Daily Picayune's headline the following morning read None Guilty!, and newspapers across the city printed announcements of a mass meeting scheduled later that day to remedy the failure of justice in the Hennessy case. Despite their acquittals, the Italians remained imprisoned along with others awaiting trial. Recognizing the urgency of the situation, Italian consul Pasquale Corte summoned the help of Governor Francis T. Nicholls, who responded that he would intervene only upon Mayor Joseph A. Shakspeare's request. (1) With no dispersal order from the mayor, a mob reportedly consisting of more than six thousand people gathered outside the jail take their revenge. Militia members forced entry into the jail and fired point-blank, killing nine of the nineteen imprisoned Italians. To appease the demands of the mob outside, the militia brought two more Italians into the streets, hanging them their deaths the delight of the raucous crowd. In total, the lynch mob assassinated eleven Italians in what is often considered the largest documented lynching in U.S. history. (2) Responding the massacre, Italy, a fledgling nation that had unified only thirty years before, sought immediate justice. Italian ambassador Baron Saverio Fava demanded that the United States pay reparations the victims' families. When the U.S. federal government failed act, Fava considered it a breach of a treaty protecting Italian subjects in the United States. Accordingly, Fava withdrew his post from Washington, D.C., and issued a subtle threat of war. The two nations remained in a diplomatic standoff for more than a year, until the U.S. government partly conceded Italy's demands by awarding $25,000 in total reparations the victims' families in April 1892. (3) Italy's bold retaliation U.S. inaction led a diplomatic debacle that resonated internationally. As one would expect, newspapers and magazines across the United States--the New York Times, the New Orleans Daily Picayune, the Illustrated American, Harper's Weekly--reported extensively on the lynchings, with reactions the mob violence ranging from condemnation support. But more surprising, Spanish-language newspapers from across the Americas showed genuine concern through extended coverage. For example, two weeks after the lynching, an editor from Panama City's La Estrella de Panama described in detail the mob's tactics: [they] arrived in front of the prison and when they tried enter through the door, no one responded so they busted it open by ramming [the door] with a wooden stake. (4) La Nation of Buenos Aires, Argentina, published a front-page editorial by Cuban writer Jose Marti that recounted the scene of the lynching. Shots blast out, Marti wrote; Bagnetto, the dead Italian, is hoisted a limb. They riddle his face with bullets. Marti noted that lynch mob members took home souvenirs of pieces of bark and leaves still fresh from the foot of the oak tree from which an Italian, covered with blood, hangs swinging. (5) Through their prose, these writers captured with aplomb the barbarism in New Orleans, recreating the events with satire and imagery. In some instances, the Spanish-language newspapers addressed racial constructions in the United States by centering on the vilification of Italian immigrants. …

The Value of Connections: Evidence from the Italian‐American Mafia

Using declassified Federal Bureau of Narcotics records on 800 US Mafia members active in the 1950s and 1960s, and on their connections within the organized crime network, I estimate network effects on gangsters’ economic status. Lacking information on criminal proceeds, I measure economic status exploiting detailed information about their place of residence. Housing values are reconstructed using current deflated transactions recorded on Zillow.com. I deal with the potential reverse causality between the economic status and the gangster’s position in the network exploiting exogenous exposure to potential pre-immigration connections. In the absence of pre-immigration data I use the informational content of surnames, called isonomy, to measure the place of origin. The instrument is valid as long as conditional on the characteristics of the gangsters (including the region of birth and a rich set of controls about the gangsters’ legal and illegal activities) such exposure influences the gangsters’ importance inside the network (called centrality) but not the preference for specific housing needs. A standard deviation increase in closeness centrality increases economic status by between one forth (OLS) and one standard deviation (2SLS).

Mafia Women: A Study on Language and Mental Representations of Women Engaged with Mafia Members

For a long time, women in the Mafia were considered victims who were unaware of the activities of the men in their families. However, it has recently been demonstrated that these women may play an important role in the organisation, particularly in the transmission of Mafia values. In this study, we explored the representations of self, relationships, and the Mafia world in women engaged with Mafia members. This was done by means of in-depth interviews and computer-assisted text analysis. A cluster analysis was applied to words used by the women in the interviews. Three clusters emerged that accounted for 85% of the principal contents of the interviews. These were interpreted as “representations of family”, “representations of social relationships”, and “ideals and values”. The analysis of words included in each cluster suggested that Mafia women are deeply involved in the transmission of traditional Sicilian values to their offspring. These ideals and beliefs are deeply rooted in the Mafia organisation and they involve attributing a central role to family, religion, and honor within the Mafia culture. Findings of the study could be positively used for developing appropriate preventative and social measures that may help these women change their ideals and beliefs related to the Mafia world, thus breaking the transmission of Mafia values.

Mafia and psychopathy

In popular culture, Mafia members are often portrayed as ruthless, callous and remorseless, but there is no empirical research on their personality traits. The goal of this research was to examine levels of psychopathic traits among Mafia members who have been convicted of a criminal offence. The Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) rated 30 Italian adult male prisoners who had been convicted for Mafia-related crimes (86% resident in one 6-month period) and 39 next adjacent convicted men who were not enrolled in any criminal organisation. Mafia members obtained lower PCL-R total scores, interpersonal and affective (PCL-R factor 1) scores and lifestyle scores (factor 2) than the other offenders. Logistic regression analysis showed that lower PCL-R factor 1 scores with higher factor 2 scores in the absence of a history of substance misuse disorder distinguished Mafia from non-Mafia offenders. A probability curve confirmed an exponential growth in the probability of classification as a Mafia member in relation to lower PCL-R factor 1 scores. Our findings bring new hope for resocialisation of convicted Mafia members, because they showed significant antisocial traits but they maintained a capacity for emotional connection and greater likelihood of engaging with training and resocialisation programmes than other imprisoned offenders in Italy.

La Mafia Italiana in Olanda

This article uses open sources to focus on the presence of Italian Mafia members and Italian Mafia groups in the Netherlands and examine the nature of their activities. Italian Mafia members and Italian Mafia groups have been active in the Netherlands since the 1980s, particularly in Amsterdam and its surroundings. The main conclusion drawn is that the Netherlands is used as a ‘hub’ to connect to the international trade in illegal goods, particularly narcotics. Known cases confirm the findings that Italians migrate to the Netherlands and sometimes invest in legal activities (e.g. pizzerias), whereas settled migrants sometimes perform odd jobs for Italian Mafia members. The Netherlands is also used as a refuge for Italian Mafia members on the run. To date, there is no sound evidence from open sources that extortion is part of the criminal activities that are performed in the Netherlands and the fact that there is a close intermingling of the upper world and the underworld is not supported by the available evidence.