Beyond the Legal Definition: External Participation in Mafia-Type Organisations

The mafia has been metaphorically represented as an octopus, whose tentacles symbolise its ability to insinuate itself into the surrounding social, economic and political fabric. Over the decades, mafia-type organisations have built an increasingly tight network of relationships with individuals outside it — belonging to the political, business and professional realms — who place their competences at the service of criminal groups in exchange for personal advantages. Such relationships have thus become inherent to ‘classic’ mafia-type groups (Cosa Nostra, Camorra and ‘Ndrangheta) and ‘ultimately constitute their strength, their ability to adapt, implant themselves and spread’. Moreover, the relations with outside actors are the principal means that enables these criminal associations — particularly Cosa Nostra and’ Ndrangheta — to continue to maintain an active, albeit diminished, role in illicit international trafficking, which is increasingly controlled by foreign criminal organisations with more specialised personnel. Here we are alluding to the multi-faceted phenomenon of contiguity.