Concluded projects
The great history of education to legality in the Italian school
The research on education to legality and anti-mafia in the Italian school aims to study one of the noblest strands of the civil history of Italy. The project – result of an agreement between the MIUR and the University of Milan – aims to reconstruct what the educational institution has done over more than thirty years (from 1980 to 2015) in order to promote the education and protagonism of the new generations on the front of the fight against the mafia. The first tranche was addressed to the study of the cases of Emilia-Romagna and Lombardy. The research developments subsequently concerned four other regions: one in the North (Piedmont) and three in the South (Calabria, Sicily, Campania), in a comparative perspective. The spectrum of the analysis was then extended, in a more synthetic form, to all Italian regions and included a specific survey of the education programs to legality and democracy carried out by the Italian Juvenile Penal Institutes.
Directed by Prof. Nando dalla Chiesa, the project has been attended by numerous researchers of the Observatory: Eleonora Cusin (Piedmont and Emilia-Romagna), Mattia Maestri, Sarah Mazzenzana and Samuele Motta (Lombardy), Martina Mazzeo (Calabria, Campania, Sicily), Roberto Nicolini (the remaining regions), and Arianna Zottarel (Italian IPM).
Confiscated companies: ICARO – Instruments to Remove Confiscated Asset Recovery’s Obstacles
ICARO is a research project funded by the EU that aims to deepen the knowledge of a frontier theme, such as the companies confiscated from organized crime and their social reuse, according to the rules provided for by Law 109 of 1996. The University of Milan participates in this multidisciplinary project together with Arci, CdiE, Avviso Pubblico, Cgil and SAO. The research is divided into several phases: from the study of the European directive and the regulations of the individual member states on seizure and confiscation, to the elaboration of a map of the risks of exposure to the phenomenon of organized crime in the 28 member states of the EU; from the analysis of the main investment sectors and business types of mafia-type criminal organizations in Italy, to the creation of a geo-referenced map of the companies confiscated on the national territory; from the analysis of ten Italian business cases, to the development of an integrated management model.
The project – launched before the establishment of CROSS and directed by Professor Nando dalla Chiesa – benefits from two collaborators, the researchers of the Observatory on Organized Crime, Federica Cabras and Ilaria Meli.
The sections of the report: Where the criminal organizations invest – Guidelines and integrated model – The risks of criminal infiltration in Europe – The ten case studies – The social reuse of the confiscated companies – Integrated model for the management and the reclamation of the companies confiscated from organized crime – Testing
Organized Crime in the North of Italy. Reports on the northern areas for the Presidency of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the Mafia phenomenon
The four reports that CROSS drafted for the Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission dealt with reconstructing the presence and activities of mafia-type organizations in the northern regions, including Emilia Romagna. The three studies aim to explore the current trends of the mafia phenomenon in the North, in quantitative and qualitative terms.
In the first report, the research group proposed a “mafia presence index” built on a provincial basis, as a result of a subjective synthetic reworking by the Observatory. The second and third reports studied the presence of organizations in the real economy – legal and illegal – and the effects produced on individual territories both on a social and cultural level.
Lastly, the fourth report focused on the presence of foreign crime, highlighting the interests and activities of these groups in the different regions analyzed. Coordinated by Professor Nando dalla Chiesa, the research group was composed of Martina Bedetti, Federica Cabras, Ilaria Meli, Samuele Motta, Sarah Mazzenzana and Roberto Nicolini.
Download here the reports: first – second – third – fourth
Assets confiscated from mafia organizations in Lombardy. Policy Paper.
The policy paper on confiscated assets in Lombardy was commissioned by the Regional Council of Lombardy to Éupolis Lombardia, which then requested the collaboration of CROSS (Project Manager: Antonio Dal Bianco, Éupolis Lombardia. Research group: Fernando dalla Chiesa, State University of Milan; Mattia Maestri, Observatory on organized crime; Mattia Mercuri, collaborator Éupolis Lombardia).
The aim: making proposals for the implementation of the provisions of the Lombardy Regional Law 17/2015 on the social recovery of real estate confiscated from organized crime and trying to outline the characteristics of a regional intervention model.
The research report contains a descriptive section of the confiscated assets, created with the help of data made available by ANBSC and Libera Lombardia and enriched through a series of interviews with the assignees, which allows to deepen and highlight the best practices in development. The emerging model of allocation management offers important food for thought both on the awareness of the symbolic and social value of confiscation, and above all on the effective realization of new forms of social entrepreneurship. The second part of the text describes the main proposals developed to solve some critical issues of the anti-mafia legislative code, also trying to highlight those that could affect the management of confiscated companies.
Organized crime in Mexico and forms of civil resistance
The research project, funded by the Cariplo Foundation, aims to investigate the main forms of civil resistance in Mexico born as a direct consequence of the dramatic situation of violence, corruption and impunity that are characterizing the country. The research is divided into two parts. The first analyses the Mexican context, i.e., the political-economic transition experienced by the country in the last fifty years, the relations – and their dynamics – with the United States, and the evolution of the criminal landscape linked to the development of drug trafficking and drug cartels. The second part, broader and more innovative from a scientific point of view, describes and reconstructs forms of civil resistance such as the movement of victims’ families, human rights defenders and social journalism.
Conducted by Thomas Aureliani, this research made use of first-hand information, forms of participatory observation, and the possibility of carrying out field interviews with privileged witnesses in May 2015, in the context of the formalization of ALAS (Latin America Alternative Social), the Latin American anti-mafia network promoted by Libera, and the subsequent participation in the First Congress of “Red Retoño”, the Mexican network within ALAS.
Download the report here
Organized crime in Brazil
The research project, funded by the Cariplo Foundation, aims to study the new dynamics that characterize organized crime in Brazil. The country in recent years has attracted some international attention, because of its recent economic development and the important events that took place there, such as the 2014 WC and the 2016 Olympics. Less attention has instead been paid to its criminal situation, despite the fact that Brazil is fully involved in the process of redefining the forms and routes of drug trafficking that since the ‘90s involves the whole South America. The research, conducted by Roberto Nicolini, particularly focuses on the presence and the rooting of drug trafficking in the city of Rio de Janeiro with specific attention to the favelas. An exploratory analysis of the main transformations of criminal phenomena in the city of São Paulo is also proposed.
Download the report here
Balkan organized crime. Genesis, growth and contemporary geography
The research project, funded by the Cariplo Foundation, analyses the origins and development of Balkan organized crime. This report starts from the study of the historical framework of the region, and its ethnic and religious conflicts, to focus on the characteristics and specificities of Balkan criminal groups. Through the reworking of the existing literature on the subject, the work aims to explain the close link between the recent Yugoslav conflicts and the birth of strong criminal groups now protagonists on different international illicit routes. Thanks to the interviews carried out during a field research by the author Carmela Racioppi, the report highlights both the many specificities of the regional context and the way in which Balkan groups are increasingly constituting themselves as expansive and enterprising subjects of illegal activities of importance outside their areas of origin.
Anti-mafia databases and major works
The Observatory conducted, thanks to the financing of a large private company, a survey on the possibilities of infiltration of organized crime in the context of major works, with a specific focus on Basilicata. The research was divided into three parts. The first section aimed to reconstruct the history of organized crime in Basilicata and, simultaneously the between the Mafia, the Camorra, the ‘Ndrangheta and the specific sector of the Great Works. The second part, on the other hand, retraced the evolution of the Great Works and anti-mafia legislation, as regards the procurement sector. Concretely: from the birth of anti-mafia certifications to the most advanced legality protocols, implemented by systems for monitoring labour and financial flows. In the last section, the research group (composed of Stefano Paglia and Antonietta Truncellito) elaborated its own proposal for an anti-mafia database, with the aim to integrate all the digital instruments already in the possessions of public administrations.