Types of organised crime in Italy. The multifaceted spectrum of Italian criminal associations and their different attitudes in the financial crisis and in the use of Internet technologies

Changing representations of organized crime in the Italian press

“…It would therefore be interesting to repeat the study by selecting newspapers on the basis of their The fact that four of the seven search terms are mafia centered (as they refer to in general to the mafia, and in particular to Cosa Nostra, the 'Ndrangheta, and the Camorra) should not be regarded as biasing towards "mafia" the identification of media articles. Rather, the choice of the keywords accounts for all four types of organized crime operating in Italy, as recently described in the socio-legal analysis done by Lavorgna and Sergi (2014a): in fact, "crimin! w/5 organizzat!"…”

“…This is not surprising, as the Italian approach to OC has always traditionally been an approach to the mafia (Mitsilegas 2003;Paoli 2003) with the two concepts de facto overlapping. The focus on the mafia as a main target of intervention can also be found in the anti-mafia legislation, which over the years was broadened to enhance the investigative capacities of law-enforcement agencies to persecute groups that were initially not taken into consideration (see Lavorgna and Sergi, 2014a for an overview). Consequently, in the Italian press, OC is mostly depicted by journalists, law enforcement officers, national policy makers, civil society, writers, and movie directors as the mafia and as a domestic problem.…”

“…Scholarly definitions and narratives around OC have evolved and been refined meaningfully over the years (see, among others, Santino 2006;Bianchini and Sicurella 2007;Paoli 2007;Lavorgna and Sergi 2014a;Savona 2015), presenting a complex, multi-layered, and diversified criminal panorama. While mafia groups are still in the spotlight, practitioners and experts agree that the nature of OC in Italy is much more varied (Sergi 2015: 666).…”

“…Apart from the presence of mafia-type and migrated mafia groups, "mixed criminal networks" (Lavorgna and Sergi 2014a) are another prominent type of OC type present in Italy, which is characterized by the actual crime committed, typically a profit-driven crime, rather than by the characteristics and the structure of the group. This type of OC tends to operate at the margins of society and their opportunistic presence in certain territories is generally linked to trafficking activities.…”

“…Finally, any type of criminal association, which occurs when at least three persons join together with the aim of committing an indefinite program of felonies (delitti) if they have a permanent and structured internal organization, is a form of OC (what has been called as a "simple criminal organization" by Lavorgna and Sergi 2014a).…”