Demystifying Ndrangheta Challenging The Organized Crime Phenomenon Of Calabria

This book is focused on demystifying ‘Ndrangheta, which includes unraveling ‘Ndrangheta’s behavioral elements that exploit criminal opportunities through conspiracy, collusion, and corruption, common among most mafia’-type groups, reinforced by ‘mafia-mystique’. The ‘Ndrangheta phenomenon has evolved over time by exploiting critical supporting elements of power present within the cultural, socio-economic, and political environments of Calabria, which in turn perpetuates, protects, and sustains 'Ndrangheta's presence and persistence. A comprehensive and practical anti-/ counter-‘Ndrangheta overarching campaign plan model is presented to assist policy makers, security practitioners, and criminologists in developing a method and a process for taking actions that neutralize essential elements of power and prestige that besides wealth, are primary objectives of ‘Ndrangheta.

This book presents an historical and sociological account of the Italian mafia-type organisation known as the ‘ndrangheta. It draws together diverse perspectives on the various ‘ndrangheta clans and their behavioural models, focusing specifically on their organisational skills, their bonds with Calabrian society and Calabrian communities around the world, their mobility, and their characterisation as poly-crime organisations. The authors demonstrate that ‘ndrangheta clans have an innovative way of being and doing mafia work through a dense network of relationships both in the ‘upperworld’ and in the ‘underworld’, a particularly acute sense of business, a reputation built on the protection of blood and family ties, and, last but not least, a symbiotic relationship and camouflage within Calabrian society. By focusing on both the structures and the activities of the clans and with findings based on judicial documents, this book explores why the ‘ndrangheta is today labeled as “the most powerful Italian mafia”. It will be of great interest to upper-level students and scholars of organised crime and sociology.

The persistence of 'Ndrangheta activities around the world show that deterrence efforts alone directed against organized crime fall short in significantly reducing or preventing 'Ndrangheta organized crime. Additional approaches derived from the Rational Choice Perspective (RCP) are discussed, which include Routine Activities (RA) and Situational Crime Prevention (SCP). These practical approaches are applied to 'Ndrangheta for the purpose of identifying required changes in the environment i.e., political, economic, social, technological, legal that are inclusive of environmental (PESTLE) in a framework using Dynamic Operational Design Planning and Assessment Approach (DODPAA). This approach offers a process for designing actions and measuring results for confronting 'Ndrangheta organized crime. An example framework model using cocaine transiting through the port of Gioia Tauro is created as an illustration to assist in developing a law enforcement, judicial and legislative plans of action in order to measure, evaluate, and have results integrated into more detailed comprehensive plans of action for reducing and eventually preventing overall 'Ndrangheta organized crime. This book presents a unique practical method, process, and model for security practitioners, criminologists and policy makers to consider for designing plans of action to confront, challenge, and assess future counter 'Ndrangheta efforts.

This book covers two lesser known but important members of the Italian Mafia: the ’Ndrangheta and the Sacra Corona Unita. Italian criminal organizations, in particular Mafia, are one of the most commonly researched organized crime groups, usually focusing on the Sicilian Mafia, Cosa Nostra, or the Neapolitan Mafia, Camorra. However, Italy has other two other Mafias, one in Apulia, Sacra Corona Unita, and the other in Calabria, ’Ndrangheta. Although an extensive literature is available on Cosa Nostra and Camorra, less is known about the other two organizations, particularly their operations in the United States. Territory is one of the most important elements in the Mafia because the criminal organization operates its signoria territoriale, controlling every illegal activity in its sphere of action. This territorial power goes beyond the Italian boundaries reaching the United States of America and other non-European countries, with the mere aim of developing their drug/weapon deals and money laundering businesses. Mafia, therefore, is not a uniquely Italian phenomenon as it might appear, but a worldwide phenomenon, affecting many societies and economies. This unique volume is its interest into a field as yet completely provides new information about the ’Ndrangheta and Sacra Corona Unita written by an interdisciplinary group of Italian scholars. It covers organizational, hierarchic, and operative aspects: that is, the role that they have in politics, in their own families, in business relations in Italy and abroad. It also highlights the particular role that Cosa Nostra and Camorra had in their development. This work will be of interest to criminology researchers studying organized crime, corruption, money laundering and trafficking, as well as researchers from related fields, such as political science, economics, and international relations.

Transnational organized crime interferes with the everyday lives of more and more people - and represents a serious threat to democracy. By now, organized crime has become an inherent feature of economic globalization, and the fine line between the legal and illegal operation of business networks is blurred. Additionally, few experts could claim to have comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the laws and regulations governing the international flow of trade, and hence of the borderline towards criminal transactions. This book offers contributions from 12 countries around the world authored by 25 experts from a wide range of academic disciplines, representatives from civil society organizations and private industry, journalists, as well as activists. Recognizing the complexity of the issue, this publication provides a cross cultural and multi-disciplinary analysis of transnational organized crime including a historical approach from different regional and cultural contexts.

Relying on previously undisclosed confessions of former mafia members now cooperating with the police, Letizia Paoli provides a clinically accurate portrait of mafia behavior, motivations, and structure in Italy. The mafia, Paoli demonstrates, are essentially multifunctional ritual brotherhoods focused above all on retaining and consolidating their local political power base. A truly interdisciplinary work of history, politics, economics, and sociology, Mafia Brotherhoods reveals in dramatic detail the true face of one of the world's most mythologized criminal organizations.

From Clans to Co-ops explores the social, political, and economic relations that enable the constitution of cooperatives operating on land confiscated from mafiosi in Sicily, a project that the state hails as arguably the greatest symbolic victory over the mafia in Italian history. Rakopoulos’s ethnographic focus is on access to resources, divisions of labor, ideologies of community and food, and the material changes that cooperatives bring to people’s lives in terms of kinship, work and land management. The book contributes to broader debates about cooperativism, how labor might be salvaged from market fundamentalism, and to emergent discourses about the ‘human’ economy.