Gender and Organized Crime in Italy

Women's Agency in Italian Mafias

Ombretta Ingrascì

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350238824
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia europea

In this comprehensive study of the role of women in the Italian mafia, Ombretta Ingrasci assesses the roles and spaces of women within traditionally male, patriarchal organized crime units. The study draws on an extensive range of research, legal reports and interviews with women involved with the mafia, public officials and police. Placed within a framework of political, social, cultural and religious history, post-1945, this book provides an excellent history of women and organized crime in modern Italy.

1

Cosa Nostra and the ’Ndrangheta

Violence, power and business

Cosa Nostra and the ’Ndrangheta, just as other mafia-type organizations, are made up of secret criminal groups that carry out activities aimed at accumulating wealth and power.

Mafia methods call for violence, as much as corruption and complicity with wider society. The mafia’s recourse to violence, both inflicted and threatened, is due to military, economic and symbolic reasons.¹ Violence is a resource allowing mafiosi to exercise control over a given territory; to handle conflicts either internally or externally; to obtain dominant positions in markets, both illegal and legal; and to achieve a ‘good’ reputation that contributes to enhancing the mafia identity associated with ‘men of honour’.

The various degrees and forms of violence perpetrated by mafias depend mainly on their structures.² Inter-organizational conflicts characterize associations with a horizontal structure to a greater extent than those with a vertical one. Generally speaking, the mafia’s use of violence tends to be frugal. Only when strictly necessary do they use violence in a spectacular manner. After the early 1990s, both Cosa Nostra and the ’Ndrangheta have reduced their recourse to visible violence, in order to avoid attracting law enforcement’s attention and the hostility of citizens – especially of those living in areas more recently colonized by the mafias.³ Thus they have opted for less visible and more subtle forms of violence.

The professional use of violence is pivotal for achieving the two objectives of mafia associations, power and business.⁴ On the one hand, violence and intimidation allow mafia groups to extort money from legitimate businesses. The ‘mafia tax’ (pizzo) is requested in exchange for ‘protection’, the need for which is created by the mafia itself through other crimes, like fire attacks or robberies.⁵ Through this crime, mafias not only get money, but can above all exercise their control and govern a given territory.

On the other hand, violence is essential for participating in illegal and legal markets. Cosa Nostra and the ’Ndrangheta have undergone a similar evolution as ‘enterprise syndicates’. They have both proven able to adapt to the modernization of Italian society. By passing from an agrarian to an urban phase and then becoming increasingly involved in drugs and financial activities, they both undertook a transformation parallel to that of Italian society, which has brought about changes in terms of needs, consumption and mentality.⁶ During this transformation, the two organizations have entered various illegal and legal markets, proving their ability to take advantage of the opportunities emerging both from underdeveloped and advanced socioeconomic contexts.

As of the beginning of the process of industrialization and the expansion of building work, mafiosi focused their interests on the construction sector. At first, mafia groups transferred the method of control used in the agricultural sector, in small farms (i.e. the so-called guardania), into construction sites, i.e. imposing manpower and the supply of materials. Later, they directly obtained public contracts and subcontracts for public and private construction projects by corrupting politicians and entrepreneurs.⁷

At the same time, in the 1970s, mafia clans also started to participate in the drug trade. The Sicilian mafia became involved in this business by using the routes traditionally employed for trafficking tobacco and citrus fruit, and by investing the money accumulated in the construction sector. The ’Ndrangheta entered the drug market using the money coming from the ransom of the numerous kidnappings they perpetrated between the late 1960s to the early 1990s.⁸

In the 1980s Cosa Nostra played a prominent role in drug trafficking, while in the late 1990s this role was taken over by the ’Ndrangheta. Since the 1980s drug trafficking has grown significantly, allowing the elite ’Ndrangheta families to make great profits.⁹ In recent decades, moreover, ’Ndrangheta groups have increased their arsenal of arms, leading investigators to define the organization as ‘a military power’.¹⁰ The combination of this military capacity with their great financial resources opened up significant opportunities in the economy and in politics.¹¹

Both in Cosa Nostra and ’Ndrangheta clans, the earnings from extortion and drug trafficking activities tend to flow into a common fund that is meant to fuel the welfare system.¹² Mafias provide social protection for their members. The outflows from the fund are devoted not only to wages, sustaining detainees’ families and legal assistance, but also go to mobility and communication, work tools (i.e. technology, weapons, corruption), health emergencies and housing.¹³

Not surprisingly, the welfare system offered by the mafias plays a significant role in attracting new candidates and also in increasing the members’ attachment to the organization. Indeed, it is ‘one of the main forms of control exerted by leaders over their members’,¹⁴ establishing loyalty and affection towards the criminal association.

The huge amount of money accumulated through narcotics led to the need to launder it. Both Cosa Nostra and ’Ndrangheta clans have invested their illegal capital in various sectors, including retail, construction, health care, food services, tourism, clubs, etc. They have also increased their interest in the usury market. This crime allows them not only to launder money, but also to exercise control over their territories.¹⁵ Mafiosi have exploited the negative economic conditions seen in Italy since 2008, and the consequent need for liquidity experienced by entrepreneurs and citizens. Some ’Ndrangheta groups’ great availability of cash alongside society’s need for money has created a perfect match between demand and supply, leading this economic crime to spread widely.¹⁶

To achieve their power and entrepreneurial aims, mafias have used not only violence, but also social capital. This has been a key resource for building networks of relationships in the ‘legal’ world, useful for expanding connections with politics and businesses.¹⁷ Both Cosa Nostra and the ’Ndrangheta have shown great expertise in developing partnerships with politicians and professionals. Close relationships with some politicians, both locally and nationally, have facilitated mafia actors in obtaining impunity and being awarded public contracts. Reciprocal and fruitful links with professionals (i.e. lawyers, accountants, architects) have been consolidated due to the growth of the mafia’s involvement in the legal economy.¹⁸

Organizational structures and rituals

When analysing mafias’ structures it is necessary to distinguish two levels: the basic organizational unit and coordination bodies,¹⁹ and intra-organizational and inter-organizational dynamics.²⁰ The above distinctions are crucial in order to understand female involvement in the mafias, insofar as women take part, even if not officially, in the first level but not in the second. Indeed, the presence of women has emerged more in the criminal investigations that have disarticulated the basic units of the organization rather than in those that have hit the higher-level organizational bodies.²¹

Moreover, it is worth remembering that mafia-type organizations, like ordinary ones, tend to adapt their structure to the changing needs produced by the context in which they are embedded.²² Not surprisingly, both Cosa Nostra and the ’Ndrangheta have adopted different forms of structure in the course of their organizational life.²³ The balance between centralization and a looser composition, as well as between a hierarchical and a horizontal structure, has changed according to the external and internal circumstances. These are often interrelated. For example, when conflicts ripen within clans belonging to the same organizations, it is likely that law enforcement agencies find space to act. Organizational responses to these interwoven internal and external negative circumstances might push the clans to reinforce their compartmentation in order to increase secrecy and thus minimize risks; or they might entrust significant roles to persons that are trustworthy, even if they do not occupy official positions, like women.

As we will see, in the last three decades Cosa Nostra’s configuration has moved towards the ’Ndrangheta’s structural model and vice versa. In other words, as Sciarrone observes:

The ’Ndrangheta seems to have imitated Cosa Nostra in providing itself with a unitary organ of coordination, but paradoxically, at the same time, the Sicilian mafiosi—to protect themselv...