Criminal Organization and Transnational Crime (original) (raw)
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Anti-mafia enterprise: Italian strategies to counter violent economies
Jerne, C. (2020) “Anti-mafia enterprise: Italian strategies to counter violent economies”, in The Handbook of Diverse Economies, Dombroski, K., Gibson-Graham, J.K. (Eds.), Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Pp. 82- 89, 2020
This chapter contributes to building a diverse, non-capitalocentric economic vocabulary by making visible concrete entrepreneurial practices that are involved in fighting criminal economies. Although they do not fit into the dominant representation of the "Economy", that is, as including all those "productive" activities that result in waged labour for a capitalist firm, both mafia and anti-mafia represent one of the many ways people organise to survive. After introducing some of the fundamental characteristics of mafia enterprise, I delve into three prime strategies that are being effectively deployed to counter mafia enterprises in the Italian context. The themes I address are property, labour, and communication. The contribution seeks not to carry out detailed analyses, but rather to map out the core elements of these economies that may be of use to different contexts around the world in countering organized crime.
Membership Has its Privileges: Old and New Mafia Organizations
Comparative Economic Studies, 1995
What makes a country, or a geographical area, more likely to develop a mafia? At the beginning we find a large-scale shock to the social system that pushes it ffom a low-crime equilibrium without a mafia toward a high-crime equilibrium with a mafia. Following the shock, the necessary condition for the development ofa mafia is the existence of a dynamic, which I call social contagion, similar to a technological lock-in. Indeed, the outbreak of a majulike organization creates a self-reinforcing process. Consequently, anti-mafia policies will be successjid only ifable to push the system back toward a lowcrime mafia-free equilibrium. Unfortunately, however, if being a member of the mafia begins to emerge as the dominant choice, elimination of the organization becomes progressively more dificult as the necessary changes in relative returns to membership increase at an increasing rate.
Organized crime groups, the state and elites
Biùliohèque nationale du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitio~ et Bibliogaphic Serviees services b~bliographiqws 395 Wellington Street 395. rue ~eihngtm O W O N KIAOti4 OliamiO)rl K1AONQ Canada canada The author has granted a non-L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence dowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproducc, loan, distribute or sefl reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation.
Mafia Organizations: The Visible Hand of Criminal Enterprise
Journal of illicit economies and development, 2020
The author, Maurizio Catino, has undertaken a meticulous examination of criminal organizations that dominate the illicit marketplace throughout the world. The Mafia, Cosa Nostra, Camorra, 'Ndrangheta, Triads, Yakuza, and the South American cartels are dissected and their respective nomenclatures compared and contrasted. Catino addresses their relationship to the illicit markets that they operate within and organize in order to minimize risks and maximize profits. Relying upon electronic surveillances, investigative reports, and intelligence sources, Catino takes this ethnographic data and molds it into a series of principles that govern each criminal organization. His research has profoundly advanced our understanding of criminal organizations and the illicit markets they supply. It will likely go down as the most seminal piece of research in the past thirty or more years.
It is generally accepted, as a societal platitude, that contemporary theories of Political Economy have the aim of constructing an international system which works towards creating order and prosperity within the context of a legitimate and examinable international system. This strive for order and prosperity faces many obvious challenges with coordination and agreement even within the legitimate sphere, but is also threatened in a very different and much more surreptitious manner within the sphere of lawlessness and crime. The establishment of order and prosperity in the global economy is challenged by the fact that there are enormous quantities of wealth circulating outside of the mechanism of the state as well as outside of the workings of other legal transnational actors. This underground, illicit circulation of capital can be severely detrimental, and at the same time, intensely lucrative for different societal groups and the governments which aim to regulate them. This paper aims to examine systems of organized crime within Italy and provide a historical investigation of these criminal organizations to determine the effectiveness of efforts made by national and international bodies to combat criminal organizations. The investigation will develop an understanding of the way that organized crime has been evolving to survive in, as well as reap the benefits of, the increased interconnectedness between states due to the effects of globalization and the establishment of international linkages, both in organized crime groups as well as in the policing and regulating methods. The historical analysis will demonstrate that organized crime groups, in their earliest stages, can be originally attributed to sentiments of protest against oppression, injustice, and poverty. The reason they have persisted is not because of these social and political factors, but they often maintain the facade of being driven by these motivations. The lucrative nature of organized crime has ensured the persistence of these groups through their evolution from protective clans in rural areas to wealthy gangs in industrial capitalist cities, and now even further, to powerful transnational actors in the globalized international community.
in "The European Review of Organised Crime", (4)1, 2017
The Veneto is one of the regions least affected by the long-term presence of organised crime groups. Major surveys conducted by the judiciary in this region have highlighted the activities of mobile Camorra groups, whose relationship in the local context was limited to the field of economic and trade cooperation and revealed no connection with the political and institutional spheres. In their national and international trajectories, camorristi arrived in the Veneto in order to invest their capital into the economy of the region, exploiting the grey zone between the legal and illegal spheres, while also following the rules of the local economy. This article traces the characteristics of the activities carried out by Neapolitan organized crime groups in the Veneto. Due to recent economic crises, services provided by local liberal professions and other economic operators play a key role in facilitating illegal activities, while giving rise to protected circuits in which market rules and competition are adjusted to favours and illegal exchanges. This paper focuses on two main case studies that involve financial companies established by criminal organizations from Campania. These groups offered lending and illegal services to hundreds of companies located in different areas of the region and did so with the active cooperation of local entrepreneurs, professionals and business consultants. In illustrating the interaction between the Camorra and local entrepreneurs in the Veneto, we took into consideration the role played by the narratives of economic criminality/illegality in creating a convergence between illegal economic practices carried out by two apparently distant social worlds.
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Vol 14. Oxford: Elsevier. pp. 429–434., 2015
The article gives an overview of academic writing on mafias. It provides a definition for this often sensationalized phenomenon which focuses on the governance functions mafias perform and their similarities to states. It contrasts mafias with other forms of organized crime. The article goes on to discuss how and why mafias emerge and exist in certain places in the world at certain times, what mafias do, how they organize, how they expand, and how finally they decline.
European Review of Organised Crime, 2017
The Veneto is one of the regions least affected by the long-term presence of organised crime groups. Major surveys conducted by the judiciary in this region have highlighted the activities of mobile Camorra groups, whose relationship in the local context was limited to the field of economic and trade cooperation and revealed no connection with the political and institutional spheres. In their national and international trajectories, camorristi arrived in the Veneto in order to invest their capital into the economy of the region, exploiting the grey zone between the legal and illegal spheres, while also following the rules of the local economy. This article traces the characteristics of the activities carried out by Neapolitan organized crime groups in the Veneto. Due to recent economic crises, services provided by local liberal professions and other economic operators play a key role in facilitating illegal activities, while giving rise to protected circuits in which market rules and competition are adjusted to favours and illegal exchanges. This paper focuses on two main case studies that involve financial companies established by criminal organizations from Campania. These groups offered lending and illegal services to hundreds of companies located in different areas of the region and did so with the active cooperation of local entrepreneurs, professionals and business consultants. In illustrating the interaction between the Camorra and local entrepreneurs in the Veneto, we took into consideration the role played by the narratives of economic criminality/illegality in creating a convergence between illegal economic practices carried out by two apparently distant social worlds.
Italian Organised Crime: Mafia Associations and Criminal Enterprises
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 1744057042000297954, 2010
The paper reviews the different forms of organised crime in Italy. To begin with, it focuses on the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, Italy's two largest and most powerful mafia associations. With their centuries-old histories, articulated structures, sophisticated ritual and symbolic apparatuses and claim to exercise a political dominion, these associations have few parallels in the world of organised crime. In its second section, the paper reviews other groups and networks that are-with varying degrees of justification-also routinely described as organised crime: these range from the Neapolitan Camorra to Apulian organised crime and the so-called new 'foreign mafie' and other criminal entrepreneurs. Whereas the new Italian and foreign players are likely to expand their activities on Italy's illegal markets, the future of Cosa Nostra and the 'Ndrangheta is more uncertain and largely depends on the decisions made by the public administrations.