The structure of drug trafficking mafias: the ‘Ndrangheta and cocaine

The paper analyses the social organization of two drug trafficking mafia groups. The groups belonged to the 'Ndrangheta, a mafia from Calabria, a Southern Italian region. Based on judicial sources, multiple linked analyses examine the tasks, statuses and social network structures of the two groups. The analyses showed that the formal hierarchy of the mafias does not play a relevant role in the organization of drug trafficking. At the same time, the two groups exhibited a particular organizational structure, with a clear division of tasks and signals of status differentiation among the members. Remarkably, the analyses highlighted the strategic positioning of the criminal leaders. The most prominent participants (high-status individuals) were not those most involved in criminal activities (i.e. the most central in the network). This positioning strategy allowed minimizing the risks and ensuring effective management of smuggling operations. Criminal leaders were able to control the activities thanks to the specific cultural, family, kinship and ritual ties characterizing the mafias. This specific organizational structure may explain the strong resilience of mafias to law enforcementaction. Implications for both research and law enforcement are discussed.     

How Mafias Migrate: The Case of the `Ndrangheta in Northern Italy

What are the conditions conducive to long‐term transplantation of mafia groups in new territories? This article systematically reviews a number of factors that facilitate such an outcome and then explores two attempts at transplantation by members of the Calabria‐based mafia group `Ndrangheta to the town of Bardonecchia (Piedmont region) and to Verona (Veneto region). While the former case was successful, the latter failed. The article concludes that features of the local economy—the presence of significant sectors of the economy unprotected by the state and a local rather than export orientation—generate a demand for criminal protection, and successful transplantation occurs in the presence of such a demand. Generalized migration or forced resettlement of mafiosi are not sufficient to predict transplantation. The article shows that a high level of interpersonal trust among local law‐abiding residents is not sufficient to hinder mafia transplantation, contrary to established theories of social capital and trust.     

Trust,Distrust and Reassurance: Diversion and Preventive Orders Through the Prism of Feindstrafrecht

This article considers Günther Jakobs' controversial theory of ‘the criminal law of the enemy’ (Feindstrafrecht). Taking an interpretive perspective that is anchored in social theory, rather than normative principles, the article traces the implications of Jakobs' central claims concerning trust relations in society as mediated by the criminal law and endeavours to articulate their relevance for English law, particularly as regards the growing role of diversion and preventive orders in criminal justice. It identifies the various ways in which these current alternatives to the criminal sanctioning process link with neo‐liberal technologies of government by connecting Jakobs' thoughts on trust with key themes in the Foucauldian governmentality literature and recent research on the ascent of auditing as a meta‐regulatory mechanism.     

Punishment and Rights in European Union Citizenship: Persons or Criminals?

While European Union (EU) citizenship has traditionally been key to limiting criminalisation at national level, over recent years crime has become a criterion to distinguish between the good and the bad citizen, and to allocate rights according to that distinction. This approach has been upheld by the EU Court of Justice (CJEU) in its case‐law, where crimes show the offender's disregard for the societal values of the host Member States, and deny his/her integration therein. This article argues that citizenship serves to legitimate criminal law. The Court outlines two—counterposing—types of human being: the law‐abiding citizen and the criminal. The article shows the legal unsoundness of the Court's approach. It does so by analysing and locating the case‐law over a crime–citizenship spectrum, marked at its opposing ends by Duff's communitarian approach to criminal law, on the one hand, and Jakobs' criminal law of the enemy, on the other.     

Criminal Law beyond the State: The European Model

This article will analyse two models of criminal law beyond the State, which are here termed ‘eunomic’ and ‘dialogic’. It will then focus on one case study, European criminal law, which was inherently ‘dialogic’ until the last decade of the past century but has now quite unique features. In accordance with classic liberal views, criminal law has always been conceptualised as one of the most salient attributes of the sovereign State. The monopoly on the use of violence was to be legitimised by the State's concern for the sphere of autonomy of the individual. It is submitted in this article that it is precisely this condition that is lacking in the current European model, which promotes security‐oriented paradigms of self‐fulfilment and effectiveness. However, criminal law, if properly conceived, could in theory function as a powerful vehicle of integration.     

Italian Organised Crime: Mafia Associations and Criminal Enterprises

The article reviews the different forms of organised crime in Italy. To begin with, it focuses on the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, Italy's two largest and most powerful mafia associations. With their centuries-old histories, articulated structures, sophisticated ritual and symbolic apparatuses and claim to exercise a political dominion, these associations have few parallels in the world of organised crime. In its second section, the article considers other groups and networks that are--with varying degrees of justification--also routinely described as organised crime: these range from the Neapolitan camorra to Apulian organised crime and the so-called new 'foreign mafie' and other criminal entrepreneurs. Whereas the new Italian and foreign players are likely to expand their activities on Italy's illegal markets, the future of Cosa Nostra and the 'Ndrangheta is more uncertain and largely depends on the decisions made by the public administrations.     

‘Mastaans’ and the Market for Social Protection Exploring Mafia Groups in Dhaka,Bangladesh

This paper presents a study of mafia groups in Bangladesh. Drawing on the views and experiences of 22 street children, 80 interviews with criminal justice practitioners, NGO workers and community members and over 3 years of participant observation of the criminal justice system, the paper considers the ‘mastaans’: Bangladeshi mafia groups. The article draws on both theories of protection and behaviour to develop a social protection theory of the mafia. The article considers the social networks of mastaan groups, their prevalence, where they operate, divisions of labour, the crimes that they commit and the associations that they have with politicians and the police. The paper demonstrates that mastaans work in alliance with corrupt members of the state and they provide access to services, resolve disputes, commit extortion and carry out a wide array of criminal activity, much of which relies on their monopolisation of violence to protect their illegal industries. The paper demonstrates—for the first time—that mafias operate in Bangladesh and draws on data gathered from both adults and children, the implications of which are discussed.     

Mass Atrocity,Mass Testimony,and the Quantitative Turn in International Law

The article identifies and analyses the development it labels the “quantitative turn” in international criminal law. Addressing the cumulative effect of the large numbers of witnesses in international processes, the article considers quantity as an integral, and substantively beneficial, component of the law's response to atrocity crimes. The article develops a theorized understanding of the relationship between mass atrocity and mass testimony and provides a taxonomy of the functions that the quantity of testimonies fulfills in international trials: the evidentiary, didactic, epistemic, and restorative functions. Focusing on a recent case before the International Criminal Court in the matter of The Prosecutor v. Bemba, the article demonstrates how the different players in the international justice system—Prosecution, Defense, Victims, and the Court—employ the functions of quantity, while negotiating concerns over manageability and scale. The goal of this article is to prompt a debate and a more careful consideration of the potential benefits of a meaningful participation of witnesses and victims in post‐atrocity proceedings. This is particularly important given the dominance of the efficiency paradigm in international criminal law (ICL) discourse, which directly impacts the quantitative turn. The article forges new ways for ICL institutions to maintain a plurality of voices and their commitment to victims while safeguarding the rights of the accused.     

古今惩贪与治盗的宽严比较

考释中国古代贪赃、官盗、民盗等罪名与刑罚,审视现行刑法中的贪污、盗窃罪名与刑罚。比较古今:古严惩官贪,宽治民盗,今则严惩民盗,宽待官贪。传统的立法经验大有借鉴的意义,现行刑法极有修改的必要。     

The roots of Russian organized crime: from old-fashioned professionals to the organized criminal groups of today

This study focuses on the development of persons and organizations in the successor states of the Soviet Union, with an emphasis on Russia. It examines the development of criminal professionalism in Russia between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and argues that exiling peasants to Siberia contributed to the development of a criminal underworld and the creation of a professional criminal underclass. In the early to late Soviet periods, vory v zakone, or “thieves-in-law,” evolved together with criminal groups as a means to survive in the GULAG, these criminal groups operating within the Soviet prisons and penal colonies. Inadequacies of the Soviet system of central planning led to the criminalization of the Soviet economy and the emergence of the thieves-in-law as critical players. Activities such as racketeering, robbery, and other crimes were dangerous but predominantly secondary. The roots of the Russian mafia lie in the innermost depths of the Russian shadow economy. Some of the key aspects of the post-Soviet privatization process are analyzed together with the interaction between various levels of the Russian government and organized crime groups. It is argued that the state was not corrupted by organized crime groups, but rather the organized crime groups became the state. In the new Russia, organized crime groups and corrupt government executives work together to generatea new criminal state.     

MARRIAGE,IN‐LAWS,AND CRIME: THE CASE OF DELINQUENT BROTHERS‐IN‐LAW*

With marriage comes in‐laws, and if the in‐laws include delinquent males, their delinquency could affect the prosocial effects of the given marriage. In this article, I focus on the effect of having a convicted brother‐in‐law as a general indicator of this broader phenomenon of family‐formation processes impairing the positive impact of marriage on crime desistance. I use registry data on all men from birth cohorts 1965–1975 in Denmark (N = 69,066) to show that when a man marries, his new family ties to delinquent brother(s)‐in‐law do indeed hinder his criminal desistance. The results that take into account the characteristics of husbands, wives, their shared family‐formation process, and the criminality of male family members suggest that 1) family dynamics tend to keep criminality within family networks and 2) influences from one's broader social network through marriage are important for the protective effects of marriage. Analyses of previous conviction, co‐offending between a man and his brother‐in‐law, as well as analyses of in‐laws who reside in close proximity confirm the two mentioned main findings. In all, the findings reported in this article add to our understanding of the processes by which families are tied, and how these family‐formation processes influence men's behavior.     

Fighting Organized Crime, with Particular Reference to Mafia Crimes in Italy

The special legal regulation of mafia crimes in Italy operatesat very different levels: at that of investigations, of criminalproceedings, of sentencing and of imprisonment. This legal regimeis based on a double track treatment, which generally speaking,is very harsh, but may turn especially lenient whenever a personopts out of a criminal group and decides to cooperate with theprosecution. In the daily fight against mafia crimes as wellas criminal offences perpetrated by other criminal organizationsor ‘associations’, the role of ‘cooperatingwitnesses’ has proven to be of pivotal importance. Anotheruseful prosecutorial tool developed by the Italian courts isthe notion of ‘external support to mafia associations’,although this now needs to be laid down in legislation. It is,in this writer's experience, the coordination of investigationsthat is critical to the prosecution and punishment of mafiacrimes, and to the dismantlement of mafia associations.     

A Neo‐Institutional Account of Prison Diffusion

Interest in legal innovations, particularly in the criminal law realm, often centers on an innovation's emergence, but not its subsequent diffusion. Typifying this trend, existing accounts of the prison's historical roots persuasively explain the prison's “birth” in Jacksonian‐Era northern coastal cities, but not its subsequent rapid, widespread, and homogenous diffusion across a culturally, politically, and economically diverse terrain. Instead, this study offers a neo‐institutional account of the prison's diffusion, emphasizing the importance of national, field‐level pressures rather than local, contextual factors. This study distinguishes between the prison's innovation and early adoption, which can be explained by the need to replace earlier proto‐prisons, and its subsequent adoption, particularly in the South and frontier states, which was driven by the desire to conform to increasingly widespread practices. This study further attributes the isomorphic nature of the diffusion to institutional pressures, including uncertainty surrounding the new technology, pseudoprofessional penal reformers and their claims about competing models of confinement, and contingent historical factors that reinforced these institutional pressures. This study illustrates the importance of distinguishing between the motivations that initiate criminal law innovations and those that advance their diffusion.     

The Emergence of Penal Extremism in California: A Dynamic View of Institutional Structures and Political Processes

This article examines legal and political developments in California in the 1970s and early 1980s that led to extreme changes in the state's use of imprisonment. It uses historical research methods to illustrate how institutional and political processes interacted in dynamic ways that continuously unsettled and reshaped the crime policy field. It examines crime policy developments before and after the passage of the state's determinate sentencing law to highlight the law's long‐term political implications and to illustrate how it benefited interest groups pushing for harsher punishment. It emphasizes the role executives played in shaping these changes, and how the law's significance was as much political as legal because it transformed the institutional logics that structured criminal lawmaking. These changes, long sought by the law enforcement lobby, facilitated crime's politicization and ushered in a new era of frenetic and punitive changes in criminal law and punishment. This new context benefited politicians who supported extreme responses to crime and exposed the crime policy process to heightened degrees of popular scrutiny. The result was a political obsession with crime that eschewed moderation and prioritized prison expansion above all else.     

From the octopus to the spider’s web: the transformations of the Sicilian mafia under postfordism

Since 1989, when the Berlin wall fell, criminal organizations have undergone to deep changes. Globalisation has indeed brought about new opportunities for new criminal organizations, as well as creating new illegal markets. For most scholars, the Sicilian mafia, or Cosa Nostra (CN), has suffered the blows of these changes and entered a deep crisis. This article aims to show that CN is not in crisis, but it is rather experiencing the changes from a fordist to a psot-fordist regime of capitalist accumulation. In order to demonstrate this thesis, the author will analyse the flaws of previous mafia theorists, the changes in economy and also in culture.     

Mobilizing the Law in China: "Informed Disenchantment" and the Development of Legal Consciousness

This article critically examines the development of legal consciousness among legal aid plaintiffs in Shanghai. It is based on 16 months of research at a large legal aid center and in‐depth interviews with 50 plaintiffs. Chinese legal aid plaintiffs come to the legal process with high expectations about the possibility of protecting their rights; however, they also have only a vague and imprecise knowledge of legal procedure and their actual codified rights. Through this process of legal mobilization, plaintiffs' legal consciousness changes in two separate dimensions: changes in one's feelings of efficacy and competency vis‐à‐vis the law, and changes in one's perception/evaluation of the legal system. Put another way, the first dimension is “How well can I work the law?” and the second is “How well does the law work?” In this study I observe positive changes in feelings of individual efficacy and competency that are combined with more negative evaluations/perceptions of the legal system in terms of its fairness and effectiveness. The positive feelings of efficacy and voice provided by the legal process encourage labor dispute plaintiffs in the post‐dispute period to plan new lawsuits and to help friends and relatives with their legal problems. Disenchantment with the promises of the legal system does not lead to despondency, but to more critical, informed action. This study provides new evidence on the nature of China's developing legal system with a focus on the social response to the state‐led “rule of law” project.     

Catch‐22: Exploring Victim Interests in a Specialist Family Violence Jurisdiction

Research and advocacy over the past few decades have combined to draw attention both to the inadequacies of criminal justice intervention in domestic violence as well as the law's positive potential. Radical changes in law, policy, and practice have been implemented in the civil and criminal jurisdictions in most western countries, including Australia. More proactive intervention from criminal justice agencies has not been without its critics. The interests of victims of domestic violence have been portrayed by some as being in conflict with those of the justice system. This article explores this interaction using evaluation surveys and qualitative data from interviews with 360 victims of domestic violence in an urban Australian jurisdiction. Using a smaller subset of respondents, the article provides an exploratory examination of victims’ engagement with criminal prosecution and how they place themselves within the decision‐making process and the objectives of the system. The article concludes that there is significant congruence between victim objectives and interests and those of a public‐interest justice system.     

Replacing Provocation in England and Wales: Examining the Partial Defence of Loss of Control

In October 2010, provocation was abolished as a partial defence to murder in England and Wales. Through the introduction of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, a new partial defence of loss of control was implemented. This sought to overcome problems associated with the provocaton defence and the gendered operation of the law of homicide, particularly in relation to male‐perpetrated intimate homicides, and the inadequate response of the law to the contexts in which battered women kill. This article first provides an account of these developments, and then examines legal stakeholders' perceptions of them. Drawing from in‐depth interviews with criminal justice professionals, it considers their perceptions of the operation of the law of homicide during a period of transition, specifically considering the formulation of the new partial defence, the initial effects of its implementation, and the significant differences between the Law Commission's recommendations and the reforms implemented by the government.     

Anthony Hammond: ‘Mr. Surface’ Peel's Persistent Codifier

Throughout the nineteenth century dissatisfaction with the criminal law frequently centred on its disparate and inaccessible state. For many reformers, particularly of a Benthamite persuasion, the route to salvation lay in the direction of the law's codification. This article examines the tenacious efforts of the barrister Anthony Hammond in the 1820s to expand Peel's limited schemes for the consolidation of criminal law statutes into a more radical, wide-ranging codification programme.     

Reductio Ad Absurdum: The Kapo Trial Judgements’ Contribution To International Criminal Law Jurisprudence And Customary International Law

Several Jewish persons designated as concentration camp guards (Kapos) during the Holocaust were subsequently tried in Israel in the 1950s and 1960s for allegedly committing grave crimes. This article examines these trial judgements and considers their significance to international criminal law jurisprudence and customary international law. First, this article will delineate the trial judgements’ purpose, relevance and previous contribution to customary international law. Secondly, a comparative narrative of the judgements with recent case law from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Court will illuminate their potential contribution, specifically to the principles of modes of liability, criminal intent, and the defence of duress. The Kapo trial judgements may therefore continue to offer an extreme case example and a worthy source of common law for international criminal law jurisprudence and customary international law.