Cosa Nostra Research Articles

Land on fire: The spatial production of the mafia

“Land on Fire: The Spatial Production of the Mafia” proposes to address a major lacuna in geographic literature: How mafia groups are socially and spatially reproducing themselves through the intentional setting of fire. Analyzing the 2021 and 2023 wildfire seasons in Sicily, this research proposes that the Sicilian Mafia is operationalizing both rural and urban space in novel ways that reflect a transformation in their organizational structure. This work engages with Henri Lefebvre’s theory on the production of space but also uses ethnography in Sicily to reorient our understanding of mafia crime, suggesting that the Sicilian Mafia’s operationalization of the landscape reflects not only an evolution of the Mafia but also an altered relationship with the land itself.

Network disruption via continuous batch removal: The case of Sicilian Mafia.

Network disruption is pivotal in understanding the robustness and vulnerability of complex networks, which is instrumental in devising strategies for infrastructure protection, epidemic control, cybersecurity, and combating crime. In this paper, with a particular focus on disrupting criminal networks, we proposed to impose a within-the-largest-connected-component constraint in a continuous batch removal disruption process. Through a series of experiments on a recently released Sicilian Mafia network, we revealed that the constraint would enhance degree-based methods while weakening betweenness-based approaches. Moreover, based on the findings from the experiments using various disruption strategies, we propose a structurally-filtered greedy disruption strategy that integrates the effectiveness of greedy-like methods with the efficiency of structural-metric-based approaches. The proposed strategy significantly outperforms the longstanding state-of-the-art method of betweenness centrality while maintaining the same time complexity.

Malta: The use of ambiguity for corruption and (mis)rule of law

The strategic use of ambiguity is a well-known instrument used by those in power to the detriment of citizens. Malta is no exception. This paper explores the strategic use of ambiguity illustrating how in Malta, laws, regulations, and international conventions are frequently misinterpreted by those in power. It finds that concepts of ambiguity are commonplace on the island, similar to that used by the Sicilian Mafia organisation, the Cosa Nostra. Strategic ambiguity is used by those in power for their benefit to keep the corrupt status quo. The article concludes that such deception is intertwined in legal, criminal, and political systems. These findings contribute to the lack of criminological research on the island, aiming to increase the criminological landscape and studies, since it is only through research and education that positive changes in society occur.

A true crime story: The role of space, time, and identity in narrating criminal authority

Abstract This article presents a theoretical and methodological argument for employing a narrative-based approach to explore criminal organisations’ (COs) claims to political authority, accompanied by an empirical example. International Relations scholarship is increasingly interested in the role narratives play in political meaning-making processes, with violent non-state actors (VNSAs) beginning to occupy a central space in such investigations. This work has contributed important insights into how VNSAs, such as terrorists and insurgents, mobilise narratives to challenge state authority. However, this literature still needs to take stock of groups that do not directly challenge the state but rather live within it. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s literary theory and using the Sicilian Mafia as a case study, I show that COs exercise and construct their narratives of political authority by reappropriating the state’s key constitutive narratives of space, time, and identity. By reflecting the same form of (statist) political imagination via alternative spatial, temporal, and identity configurations, these groups simultaneously reject and reproduce modern articulations of political authority in their spatio-temporal and identity dimensions.

Progress, employment and profit: The construction of the mafioso social capital and the Sack of Palermo

AbstractThe Sack of Palermo that took place from the 1950s to the 1980s dramatically changed the Sicilian capital's economic and social landscape. Vast tracts of what was agricultural land, including the Conca d'Oro citrus plain, were destroyed as the city was engulfed by concrete. The Mafia played a principal role in this process. This paper will show how Cosa Nostra consolidated its business through social and local connections by granting employment to the members of lower classes such as craftsmen and construction workers and thus gaining consent. The building process of a mafioso social capital, bound together by the ideology of progress, will be analysed through a qualitative analysis.

Sicilian sulphur and mafia: resources, working conditions and the practice of violence

This paper reconsiders the nexus between the abundance of resources and the origins of Sicilian mafia by exploiting a new set of historical data at the municipal level on the Sicilian sulphur industry in the late nineteenth century, obtained from official reports of the Royal Corps of Mining Engineers. Our evidence confirms that sulphur favoured the rise of organized crime, as emphasized in the previous studies. However, we show that the impact of local production on mafia was smaller in the areas richest in sulphur. Moreover, mechanization in the extraction process was associated with lower incidence of mafia. Taken together, our findings suggest that larger lodes encouraged better and more orderly working conditions for the miners, possibly reducing physical and psychic strain and, consequently, their inclination to violence. In other words, the quality of working conditions affected the supply of violent individuals.

The economics of extortion: Theory and the case of the Sicilian Mafia

This paper studies extortion of firms operating in legal sectors by a profit-maximizing criminal organization. We develop a simple taxation model under asymmetric information to find the Mafia optimal extortion as a function of firms’ observable characteristics, namely size and sector. We test the predictions of the model on a unique dataset on extortion in Sicily, the Italian region where the Sicilian Mafia, one of the most ancient criminal organizations, operates. In line with our theoretical model, our empirical findings show that extortion is strongly concave with respect to firm size and highly regressive. The percentage of profits appropriated by the Mafia ranges from 40% for small firms to 2% for large enterprises. We derive some implications of these findings for market structure and economic development.

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.

Web Based Escape Room Game “La Cosa Nostra” Using WebGL

"La Cosa Nostra" is a two-dimensional website-based escape room game that can be accessed using 
 internet browser. This game was developed with Unity Game Engine. The player will play as a 
 detective investigating the case of a missing woman. Testing methods was done by Blackbox testing, Alpha 
 testing by lecturer and Beta Testing will be using survey form.

REGULACJA PRAWNA PRZESTĘPCZOŚCI ZORGANIZOWANEJ

This paper addresses the problem of organized crime using the example of the Sicilian Mafia. The main purpose of the argument is to present the Mafia’s activity as a pathology of the system, which has a negative effect on both the economy and the legal situation of southern Italy. The study is largely concerned with national and EU regulations related to organized crime. Attention is also devoted to the United Nations Convention on the subject in question. In addition, the paper discusses the impact of the Mafia on economic processes and society. In particular, the Mafia’s activities in the security industry are examined. The overall aim is to present the Mafia as a system error and to explore extensively the topic of the Mafia in Italian Sicily from a legal and economic viewpoint, with an emphasis placed on organized crime as a global problem.

Is the Sinaloa Cartel a Mafia?

Abstract Aiming to reduce the conceptual ambiguity surrounding the topic of organized crime, this study assesses the extent to which the Sinaloa Cartel, the most prominent Mexican drug syndicate, has the characteristics of a mafia. The study uses Paoli’s 2020 mafia framework, which identifies seven typifying characteristics of mafias, such as the Sicilian Cosa Nostra or the Japanese Yakuza. It relies on a broad review of the literature, court transcripts and media sources. The Sinaloa Cartel fully meets none of the seven typifying traits of mafias. It comes closest on the last trait, popular legitimacy and power-sharing, but it is properly characterized as a large drug-selling enterprise. Lastly, the study draws (sombre) policy implications from the analysis.

50 años de La maffia (1972), de Leopoldo Torre Nilsson: representaciones de la mafia ítalo-rosarina. Interacciones entre narrativas periodísticas, literarias y cinematográficas

The following article analyzes the film La maffia (1972), by Leopoldo Torre Nilsson. I try to show how the film configures a representation of the Sicilian mafia of the 1930s less from the historical facts than from the speech of the journalistic chronicle of the time, of the Hollywood and Argentine cinematographic tradition and also from the literary tradition and the political imaginary linked to Peronism. In turn, the film itself – enormously successful with critics and audiences alike – goes on to feed the Argentine imaginary of that mafia, which continues to operate largely as an important influence on the political imaginary.

Policing the Sicilian Mafia: Repression and Control of the Mafia Phenomenon in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy

The article analyzes the repression of the Mafia phenomenon in Sicily between 1896 and 1901. The close attention paid to the Mafia by the authorities during this period produced a strong evidence base which this article examines through the lens of policing practices. These practices remain neglected as to date the historiography has focused on tracing legal developments rather than examining the application of laws by the forces of law and order. Accordingly, the article puts forward a series of historiographically important questions: what was the attitude of police forces in controlling dangerous individuals? How much do the practices adopted by police forces tell us about the possibilities for state intervention and the limits of its influence? What was the relationship between the perception of a criminal threat, police operations and the construction of judicial truth? The article reveals a very clear image of the Italian state in the liberal era. In fact, state officials and high-ranking institutional figures seemed interested in strengthening the social and political order by establishing control networks which could operate in any circumstances. They aimed to make it impossible not to interact with state officials. In this sense, rather than seeking a complete monopoly of violence, they aimed to oblige local power holders, social groups and semi-public figures to bargain with state officials. The effect was that social groups with means of violence at their disposal did not necessarily become a threat to the maintenance of order and nor did they necessarily forestall the possibility of state mediation and hegemony.

The Structure of Trade-type and Governance-type Organized Crime Groups: A Network Study

Abstract The paper provides a theoretical framework for categorizing organized crime groups based on what they do – whether they produce, trade or govern – as well as their aims. This paper then tests whether the internal structure of a heroin distribution organization in New York City, a Sicilian mafia group and the Provisional Irish Republican Army differ. Applying Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) methods to network data, we find the organizational structure of trade-type organized crime differs markedly from governance-type, as well as between financially-motivated and politically-motivated groups. Trade-type organized crime and financially-motivated groups display a high level of centralization, an even distribution of clustering values, short paths and low homophily. Governance-type organized crime and politically-motivated groups display the opposite features. We conclude that the core activity and aim of the group are crucial in understanding the organizational structure.

Becoming Italian

Becoming Italian

Hands over the city: the Mafia, L'Ora and the sack of Palermo

AbstractThe article is a critical investigation of the role played by the Palermo left-wing newspaper L'Ora in uncovering the Sicilian Mafia's urban affairs and property speculation during the sack of Palermo in the 1960s. It pays particular attention to L'Ora's complex narrative concerning the urban Mafia and the many obstacles that the newspaper encountered in its attempt to defend the city. The article aims to explain L'Ora's account of the Mafia as an intersection of violent crime, politics and business. This study uses investigative series and archival sources to explain the emergence of ‘antimafia’ as both concept and political practice in the urban history of Palermo.

There are too Many Christians Involved: Cosa Nostra and Professional Football in Palermo

This work will show the involvement of Cosa Nostra in the soccer business in Palermo. The importance of controlling the territory for Cosa Nostra will be the core of the article. The Palermo mafia works through the Intermediation for the, in order to pursue its interests, and the intermediation by the mafia, acting on behalf of legal actors. It will revolve around the aspects of the relation between legal and illegal world, showing how legal actors might find it useful to rely on the partnership of criminal organisations. Legal and illegal world are in a fluid relation, so that the border between the two might blur. Cosa Nostra enjoys the consent and the demand of legal actors.

The Whole Is Greater than the Sum of the Parts: A Multilayer Approach on Criminal Networks

Traditional social network analysis can be generalized to model some networked systems by multilayer structures where the individual nodes develop relationships in multiple layers. A multilayer network is called multiplex if each layer shares at least one node with some other layer. In this paper, we built a unique criminal multiplex network from the pre-trial detention order by the Preliminary Investigation Judge of the Court of Messina (Sicily) issued at the end of the Montagna anti-mafia operation in 2007. Montagna focused on two families who infiltrated several economic activities through a cartel of entrepreneurs close to the Sicilian Mafia. Our network possesses three layers which share 20 nodes. The first captures meetings between suspected criminals, the second records phone calls and the third detects crimes committed by pairs of individuals. We used measures from multilayer network analysis to characterize the actors in the network based on their local edges and their relevance to each specific layer. Then, we used measures of layer similarity to study the relationships between different layers. By studying the actor connectivity and the layer correlation, we demonstrated that a complete picture of the structure and the activities of a criminal organization can be obtained only considering the three layers as a whole multilayer network and not as single-layer networks. Specifically, we showed the usefulness of the multilayer approach by bringing out the importance of actors that does not emerge by studying the three layers separately.

Taking care of everyone’s business: interpreting Sicilian Mafia embedment through spatial network analysis

ABSTRACT Mafia-type organisations often have a strong geographical and cultural entrenchment in the territory they belong. However, their analysis as a spatially networked social structure is still missing. A combined socio-spatial network analysis is presented here, through the demise of a large police operation called Operazione Perseo in 2008. This approach is developed in two ways. At first, a visual representation of the social network of this large group of mafiosi embedded in a geographical space is presented. Three main salient territorial features of the network are thus highlighted. A high density of links in some neighbourhoods, as well as connections across different Mandamenti, the territorial units where Mafia families operate, and the correlation of links and socio-economic determinants, like the unemployment rates. Secondly, a spatial econometric analysis of centrality measures of the group is suggested here. Findings show a positive spatial correlation in the Eigenvalue centrality scores.

Effective strategies for targeted attacks to the network of Cosa Nostra affiliates

Network dismantling has recently gained interest in the fields of intelligence agencies, anti-corruption analysts and criminal investigators due to its efficiency in disrupting the activity of malicious agents. Here, we apply this approach to detect effective strategies for targeted attacks to Cosa Nostra by analysing the collaboration network of affiliates that participate to the same crimes. We preliminarily detect statistically significant homophily patterns induced by being member of the same mafia syndicate. We also find that links between members belonging to different mafia syndicates play a crucial role in connecting the network into a unique component, confirming the relevance of weak ties. Inspired by this result we investigate the resilience properties of the network under random and targeted attacks with a percolation based toy model. Random removal of nodes results to be quite inefficient in dismantling the network. Conversely, targeted attacks where nodes are removed according to ranked network centralities are significantly more effective. A strategy based on a removal of nodes that takes into account how much a member collaborates with different mafia syndicates has an efficiency similar to the one where nodes are removed according to their degree. The advantage of such a strategy is that it does not require a complete knowledge of the underlying network to be operationally effective.