Presence Of Mafia Research Articles

Organised crime and educational outcomes in Southern Italy: An empirical investigation

This paper explores the relationship between the presence of organised crime into the local socio-economic fabric and educational outcomes in Southern Italy. For this purpose, we rely on different indices of organized crime, the main of which is the well-established Mafia Presence Index (IPM), a composite indicator capturing manifold dimensions (activities, violence, political, and economic infiltration) of the presence of Mafia-type organizations on the national soil. These indices proxy the (scale of) negative Mafia-type values that permeate a local society and that are likely to hinder educational achievements, distorting the incentives of both the youngsters (and/or their parents) to invest in human capital and the local firms to employ those who decide to make this investment. Furthermore, combining contemporary individual-level educational outcomes with historical data on Mafia infiltration, we control for endogeneity concerns through an IV strategy. We provide evidence that the presence of organised crime at local level significantly decreases the scores achieved by primary school students, undertaking the INVALSI test for literacy in Southern Italy. Our results are robust to the use of different measures of organised crime, to the inclusion of different sets of controls, different subsamples and to relaxing the exclusion restriction in the IV strategy.

POLITICAL REFORM OF LAND MAFIA PREVENTION LAW IN INDONESIA

The presence of land mafias can hinder investment and economic growth, as the crimes committed include large-scale land disputes, disputes, conflicts, and involve large economies, thus requiring prevention at the administrative level. This research aims to find and develop new legal regulatory aspects to prevent future mafias. This study is a descriptive study with a socio-legal research perspective. The results of this investigation, in an attempt to prevent future agrarian mafias from the administrative field, have produced a new political-legal structure of the cadastral system, that is, the idea of changing the cadastral publication system for a positive publication system, through the reform of the regulations applicable to Law Number 5 of 1960. Likewise, during the period of validity of the articles related to the negative publication system, a registration process is carried out. In case of error, and in case of damage to the parties that may have more rights, the State guarantees the compensation fund of the claimant, whose rights are represented as a form of compensation with indefeasible and indemnity concepts.

Hosting to skim: organized crime and the reception of asylum seekers in Italy

ABSTRACT The paper investigates the link between organized crime and Italy’s publicly funded asylum seekers’ reception facilities. We gather detailed municipal-level data on the location of mafia activities and Protection System for Asylum Seekers and Refugees (SPRAR)-type reception centres, and provide evidence of how the local presence of mafia increases the likelihood of hosting reception facilities. Statistical evidence and in-depth expert interviews suggest that organized crime correlates with less transparent tendering procedures in the set-up of such centres, while hosting activities increase after local governments are infiltrated by mafias. Overall, results underscore the importance of measures aimed at contrasting organized crime, especially at times of ‘crises’ when public policy is subject to ‘states of exception’.

Illicit drugs seizures in 2013–2018 and characteristics of the illicit market within the Neapolitan area

The study presents results of toxicological analysis performed on seized material in Neapolitan area in the period from 2013 to 2018. A constancy in THC and heroin percentages is evidenced (%THC ~10% and ~11.5% for marijuana and hashish; heroine: 20–24%), with mean values exceeding the European data. Data on cocaine revealed a constant increment of active principle percentage over the studied period (from 40% in 2013 to ~65% in 2018), with peak of 70% in 2017; also, number of samples exceeding the mean value increased over years. Active principles contents resulted higher than the ones reported in other Italian area ever the same period; marijuana was prevalent on hashish, confirming an Italian trend different from other European countries. A map of the Campania region evidenced two main “storage” districts, one corresponding to the city center and the second located in the northern part. If compared with literature data on the presence of local mafia, these areas are perfectly superimposable to those with the highest risk of homicides, thus confirming the degree of radicalization of local organizations and the relative weight of proceeds from drugs sale. Moreover, such radicalization within the territory seems to be the main reason of the absence of new psychoactive substances among the seized material.

Blowing in the Wind: The Infiltration of Sicilian Mafia in the Wind Power Business

Public policies in the last 20 years have promoted in Italy the investment in renewable energy sources within the framework of climate change policies. Investment in renewables received generous incentives, leading also in Sicily to a rapid expansion in the capacity installed. We analyse whether rents from wind investment may have attracted Sicilian mafia. We argue that the wind business is particularly attractive when a criminal organization invests in the regular economy. We find that the probability of observing a wind farm in a municipality is higher, once controlled for geographical and political factors, if there is a mafia family embedded, identifying a causal link from mafia presence to wind investment. Moreover, the involvement of mafia groups adapted to the changing regime in incentives around 2012, moving from large investments, direct involvement or the provision of intermediation services to small scale investments in the municipalities where the families are rooted. These results are consistent with the episodes unveiled in judicial inquiries in Sicily. We compare these results with the case of Apulia, where large wind investments have been supported by an environmentally committed regional government and where the judges did not find evidence of a massive penetration of the local organized crime in the wind business. We show that the location of wind farms in this region depends on favourable geographical conditions but is not correlated with the presence of organized crime, consistently with the negative evidence from judicial inquiries.

Gulags, Crime, and Elite Violence: Origins and Consequences of the Russian Mafia

This paper studies the origins and consequences of the Russian mafia (vory-v-zakone). I web scraped a unique dataset that contains detailed biographies of more than 5,000 mafia leaders operating in 15 countries of the (former) Soviet Union at some point between 1916 and 2017. Using this data, I first show that the Russian mafia originated in the Gulag – the Soviet system of forced labor camps which housed around 18 million prisoners in the 1920s-1950s period. Second, I document that the distance to the nearest camp is a strong negative predictor of mafia presence in Russia’s communities in the early post-Soviet period. Finally, using an instrumental variable approach which exploits the spatial distribution of the gulags, I examine the effects of mafia presence on local crime and elite violence in mid-1990s Russia. In particular, I show that the communities with mafia presence experienced a dramatic rise in crime driven by turf wars which erupted among rival clans around 1993 and persisted for much of the 1990s. Further heterogeneity analysis reveals that mafia presence led to a spike in attacks against businessmen, fellow criminals, as well as law enforcement officers and judges, while politically-motivated violence remained unaffected.

Gulags, Crime, and Elite Violence: Origins and Consequences of the Russian Mafia

This paper studies the origins and consequences of the Russian mafia (vory-v-zakone). I web scraped a unique dataset that contains detailed biographies of more than 5,000 mafia leaders operating in 15 countries of the (former) Soviet Union at some point between 1916 and 2017. Using this data, I first show that the Russian mafia originated in the Gulag – the Soviet system of forced labor camps which housed around 18 million prisoners in the 1920s - 1950s period. Second, I document that the distance to the nearest camp is a strong negative predictor of mafia presence in Russia’s communities in the early post-Soviet period. Finally, using an instrumental variable approach which exploits the spatial distribution of the gulags, I examine the effects of mafia presence on local crime and elite violence in mid-1990s Russia. In particular, I show that the communities with mafia presence experienced a dramatic rise in crime driven by turf wars which erupted among rival clans around 1993 and persisted for much of the 1990. Further heterogeneity analysis reveals that mafia presence led to a spike in attacks against businessmen, fellow criminals, as well as law enforcement officers and judges, while politically-motivated violence remained unaffected.

Measuring Organised Crime Presence at the Municipal Level

While indicators assessing the quality of life often comprise measures of crime or fear of crime, these components usually refer to property or violent crimes. More complex crimes, which may significantly impact on the social, economic, and political conditions of local communities, are often overlooked, mostly due to problems in adequately measuring the levels of e.g. organised crime and corruption. Indeed, despite the growing scholarly attention, measurements of organised crime are rare and frequently affected by important methodological limitations. This study addresses this issue by proposing the Mafia Presence Index (MPI), a composite indicator measuring the presence of the mafias in Italy. The MPI aggregates variables measuring different dimensions of mafia presence, namely the presence and activities of mafia groups, mafia violence, and infiltration in politics and the economy. Furthermore, the analysis explores the validity and robustness of the MPI by considering possible alternative variables and by assessing the impact of different calculation strategies. Results show that the MPI is a parsimonious and consistent measure of mafia presence, relying on a core set of five variables directly related to mafia presence. The index is also robust to different calculation methods and is negatively associated with the most popular indexes measuring the quality of life in Italy.

Out of the Darkness: Re-Allocation of Confiscated Real Estate Mafia Assets

In an effort to tackle criminal groups, the Italian State allows the confiscation of properties belonging to individuals convicted for mafia-related crimes and their reallocation to a new use. This policy is considered both as an anti-mafia measure and as a way to partially compensate the society for the harm made by the criminal organisations. Whether and how this measure has had an impact on the local areas where it is implemented, however, has not yet been investigated. We test the hypothesis that the policy contributes to the regeneration of urban spaces by assessing its impact on the value of buildings in the vicinity of confiscated/re-allocated properties. To this aim, we perform difference-in-differences analyses, both at the level of local housing markets and at the level of individual buildings, investigating the externalities of the policy across the whole Italian territory. The results unveil a positive and significant effect of re-allocations of confiscated real estate assets on house prices, declining with distance from the re-allocation site. The impact is larger in cities with stronger mafia presence and in more deprived neighbourhoods. This suggests that the policy contributes to add value to the territory where it is applied and favours processes of urban revitalisation. These findings have important implications for the development of deprived urban areas characterised by a strong presence of criminal organisations.

Origins of the Sicilian Mafia: The Market for Lemons

In this article, we study the emergence of an extractive institution that hampered economic development in Italy for more than a century: the Sicilian mafia. Since its first appearance in the late 1800s, the reasons behind the rise of the Sicilian mafia have remained a puzzle. In this article, we argue that the mafia arose as a response to an exogenous shock in the demand for oranges and lemons, following Lind's discovery in the late eighteenth century that citrus fruits cured scurvy. More specifically, we claim that mafia appeared in locations where producers made high profits from citrus production for overseas export. Operating in an environment with a weak rule of law, the mafia protected citrus production from predation and acted as intermediaries between producers and exporters. Using original data from a parliamentary inquiry in 1881–1886 on Sicilian towns, the Damiani Inquiry, we show that mafia presence is strongly related to the production of oranges and lemons. The results hold when different data sources and several controls are employed.

Promoting Awareness about Psychological Consequences of Living in a Community Oppressed by the Mafia: A Group-Analytic Intervention.

The effects of the Mafia have been extensively studied from sociological, economic, and historical points of view. However, little research has investigated the influence of the Mafia on individuals and communities in terms of its psychological and social impact. In order to contribute to the advancement of our understanding of the psychological effects of the Mafia on individuals and communities and to promote a participative process of social change, a group analytic intervention was conducted within a Community Based Participatory Research carried out in Corleone, a small Sicilian town with a historically recognized role in the evolution of the Mafia, as well as in the fight against its control. Qualitative findings from the group intervention revealed the development of an awareness process that allowed participants to become aware of their social unconscious anxieties and defenses and to recognize and manage the strong emotional impact related to the Mafia's presence in their lives. Highlighting how psychological processes can have negative impacts on individual and collective capacity to pursuit transformation and resilience, this article provides important insight on how clinical psychology may operate in socio-cultural contexts to promote the reconstruction of the traumatic social dimensions in the community.

The Italian mafias in the world: A systematic assessment of the mobility of criminal groups

This study complements existing literature on the mobility of criminal groups (mainly based on country case studies) with the first systematic assessment of the worldwide activities of the four main types of Italian mafias (Cosa Nostra, Camorra, ’Ndrangheta and Apulian mafias) from 2000 to 2012. Drawing from publicly available reports, a specific multiple correspondence analysis identifies the most important associations among mafias, activities, and countries. The results show that the mafias concentrate in a few countries; drug trafficking is the most frequent activity, whereas money laundering appears less important than expected; a stable mafia presence is reported in a few developed countries (mainly Germany, Canada, Australia, and the United States). The mafias show significant differences: the ’Ndrangheta tends to establish structured groups abroad, whereas the other mafias mainly participate in illicit trades.

Organized crime and electoral outcomes. Evidence from Sicily at the turn of the XXI century

This paper investigates the relationship between Sicilian mafia and politics by focusing on municipality-level results of national political elections. It exploits the fact that in the early 1990s the Italian party system collapsed, new parties emerged and mafia families had to look for new political allies. It presents evidence, based on disaggregated data from the Italian region of Sicily, that between 1994 and 2013 Silvio Berlusconi's party, Forza Italia, obtained higher vote shares at national elections in municipalities plagued by mafia. The result is robust to the use of different measures of mafia presence, both contemporary and historical, to the inclusion of different sets of controls and to spatial analysis. Instrumenting mafia presence by determinants of its early diffusion in the late XIX century suggests that the correlation reflects a causal link.

Benford’s law predicted digit distribution of aggregated income taxes: the surprising conformity of Italian cities and regions

The yearly aggregated tax income data of all, more than 8000, Italian municipalities are analyzed for a period of five years, from 2007 to 2011, to search for conformity or not with Benford's law, a counter-intuitive phenomenon observed in large tabulated data where the occurrence of numbers having smaller initial digits is more favored than those with larger digits. This is done in anticipation that large deviations from Benford's law will be found in view of tax evasion supposedly being widespread across Italy. Contrary to expectations, we show that the overall tax income data for all these years is in excellent agreement with Benford's law. Furthermore, we also analyze the data of Calabria, Campania and Sicily, the three Italian regions known for strong presence of mafia, to see if there are any marked deviations from Benford's law. Again, we find that all yearly data sets for Calabria and Sicily agree with Benford's law whereas only the 2007 and 2008 yearly data show departures from the law for Campania. These results are again surprising in view of underground and illegal nature of economic activities of mafia which significantly contribute to tax evasion. Some hypothesis for the found conformity is presented.

Organized Crime and Electoral Outcomes in Sicily

This paper investigates the relationship between mafia and politics by focusing on the market for votes. It exploits the fact that in the early 1990s the Italian party system collapsed, new parties emerged and mafia families had to look for new political allies. It presents evidence, based on disaggregated data from the Italian region of Sicily, that between 1994 and 2008 Silvio Berlusconi’s party, Forza Italia, obtained higher vote shares in municipalities plagued by mafia. The result is robust to the use of different measures of mafia presence, both contemporary and historical, to the inclusion of different sets of controls and to spatial analysis. Instrumenting mafia’s presence by determinants of its early diffusion in the late XIX century suggests that the correlation reflects a causal link, which would be coherent with mafia’s choice to back Forza Italia in exchange for favorable policies.

Counterfeiting, illegal firearms, gambling and waste management: an exploratory estimation of four criminal markets

This article focuses on four different criminal markets: counterfeiting, illegal firearms trafficking, gambling and waste management. Despite recurrent allegations that these markets have a high mafia presence, there is a lack of reliable estimates of their sizes and the revenues that they generate. Figures in reports and media vary significantly, and the methods used to obtain them are often obscure. This study develops four different estimation methodologies with which to estimate the four criminal markets in Italy at the national and regional levels. Considering that these are the first attempts to estimate these markets, the aim of the article is to stimulate debate on how to improve measurement of the crime proceeds from these criminal markets.

Does the Mafia suppress entrepreneurship in Italy?

A great divide exists within Italy: the North is prosperous while the South remains relatively poor. The divide has persisted and regions have failed to converge, contradicting neo-classical growth theory. With this in mind, the following research aims to contribute toward the dialog pertaining to the divide and its persistence by discussing Mafia presence and entrepreneurship. Little has been done to establish a solid relationship between entrepreneurship and Mafia presence, and even fewer studies have been conducted utilising a solid measurement of Mafia presence that can be used for meaningful discourse. Using probit and ordered probit to obtain marginal effects, the research shows that Mafia presence has no sound relationship with entrepreneurial desire, yet has a significantly negative one with entrepreneurial outlook. The research exposes a pattern of discouragement and suggests that Mafia presence suppresses entrepreneurship; limiting the amount of firms and investment that flows through communities in the South. Policy makers should enact policy and increase enforcement to quell Mafia expansion and reduce Mafia presence in areas already under control.

Italian Organized Crime in the UK

This opinion piece presents some reflections on the presence and activities of Italian Mafias in Europe and the UK. In particular, it calls for an improved understanding of how these groups function outside their territory of origin and better cooperation among European law enforcement agencies if their economic power is to be challenged. Democracy is slowly being undermined by these groups and it is no longer only Italian democracy.

The Economic Costs of Organized Crime: Evidence from Southern Italy

I examine the post-war economic development of two regions in southern Italy exposed to mafia activity after the 1970s and apply synthetic control methods to estimate their counterfactual economic performance in the absence of organized crime. The synthetic control is a weighted average of other regions less affected by mafia activity that mimics the economic structure and outcomes of the regions of interest several years before the advent of organized crime. The comparison of actual and counterfactual development shows that the presence of mafia lowers the growth path, at the same time as murders increase sharply relative to the synthetic control. Evidence from electricity consumption and growth accounting suggest that lower GDP reflects a net loss of economic activity, due to the substitution of private capital with less productive public investment, rather than a mere reallocation from the official to the unofficial sector.

Where is the mafia in Italy? Measuring the presence of the mafia across Italian provinces

This article presents the Mafia Index (MI), an index measuring the presence of mafias at the provincial level. In the abundant literature on Italian mafias, relatively few studies have attempted to measure the presence of mafias across the country. A review of previous attempts points out the limitations and methodological shortcomings of existing measurements. The study provides an operational definition of ‘mafia’ and selects the most appropriate indicators and variables according to multiple criteria. The MI combines data on mafia-type associations, mafia murders, city councils dissolved for infiltration by organised crime, and assets confiscated from organised crime and covers the period between 1983 and 2009. The MI highlights not only the strong concentration of the mafias in their original territories but also their significant presence in the central and northern provinces. This confirms that mafias should not be regarded as typically Southern Italian phenomena, but rather as a national problem.