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Integration of the Italian Crime Scene

NCJ Number
168975
Journal
European Journal of Crime, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Volume: 4 Issue: 2 Dated: (1996) Pages: 131-162
Author(s)
L Paoli
Date Published
1996
Length
32 pages
Annotation
The recognition of the corporate nature and the specific facts of each Italian crime coalition has occurred at the same time as the realization of a process of integration and blurring of distinctions and boundaries among crime coalitions in the Italian crime scene.
Abstract
In addition to the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the existence of three other major clusters of Italian crime groups has been proven: The Calabrian 'ndrangheta, the Neapolitan camorra, and the Apulian Sacra Corona Unita. Whereas the latter group is a recent phenomenon that has developed only in the last 15 years, the other three apparently have existed since the mid-19th century. The current status of the integration of these four groups consists of a two-fold movement. First, it involves the four major crime coalitions and it manifests itself in a growth of contacts, business exchanges, and partnerships among the regional home seats and their branches in northern and central Italy and abroad. In turn, this interaction among the crime coalitions has fostered the circulation of organizational models and symbolic codes among them and is currently favoring the development of "vertical integration." Second, the trend toward the unification of the Italian crime society involves other actors in the illegal arena, ranging from financial and economic criminals to politicians and firms involved in corruption schemes, from illicit lobbying networks to terrorist groups. The relationships between these subjects and traditional mafia groups have intensified over the last 20 years, leading to the sharing of similar methods of intervention in the Italian economic and political systems and even to the partial merging of some of them. The increasing unification of the various segments of the Italian crime scene can provide some interesting forecasts and hints about analogous integrative processes that might occur in other countries as well as at the international level. 1 figure and 114 footnotes