Ernesto Ugo Savona

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore | UNICATT · Transcrime

This chapter provides the first analyses of the criminal career of the Italian mafias members. The analysis is based on the unique Proton Mafia Member dataset, provided by the Italian Ministry of Justice, with information on all individuals who received a final conviction for mafia offences since the 1980s. The PMM includes information on more than...

This volume provides insights on how recruitment patterns develop for two related types of criminal networks: organized crime and terrorism. It specifically explores the social, situational, psychological, and economic drivers of recruitment. Although organized crime networks and terrorism networks can differ in underlying goals and motivations, th...

This deliverable presents the reports of T5.3 as part of WP5. It focuses on presenting the policy recommendations based on the results of the PROTON-S simulations. Since the consortium agreed on the development of separate models for the recruitment into organised crime and terrorist networks, the report is divided in two sections.

Most of previous research in the field focused on shrinkage (or shortage) as a proxy measure of retail crime (for a definition, see below). According to these studies, measuring shrinkage across firms, sectors and countries provides a measure of the level of retail crime across the same firms, sectors and countries. The starting point of this repo...

Final report of EU co-funded MORE project. MORE aimed to analyse, model and map the risk factors of serious and organised crime (SOC) infiltration in legitimate European businesses. It focused on risk factors at two levels: • Macro level, i.e., across countries,regions and business sectors; • Micro level, i.e., at the firm level, in terms of owners...

Theft of medicines is emerging as the new frontier of pharmaceutical crime and of organised retail crime. It is attractive to criminals due to the high profits and the relatively low risk, and it is facilitated by many asymmetries of the legal market. Using data retrieved from open sources and institutional reports, this chapter focuses on the thef...

With the introduction of the new European anti-money laundering directive, all EU countries have to carry out an assessment of the money laundering (ML) risks in their territories. Italy, as well, published at the end of 2014 the first assessment of ML risk at the national level, currently under update. This paper-based on the findings of European...

This report presents the study of the criminal careers of Italian mafia members and mafia leaders, with a specific focus on recruitment. The analysis applies for the first time the criminal careers framework (firstly developed by Blumstein in 1986) to the population of individuals convicted for mafia offenses between 1982 and March 2017 provided by...

This report presents a systematic review of the social, psychological, and economic factors relating to criminalisation and recruitment to organised crime groups (OCGs). It encompasses different types of OCGs, namely mafias, drug trafficking organisations (DTOs), gangs, and a residual category including other criminal organisations. This chapter i...

This comprehensive volume analyzes dual markets for regulated substances and services, and aims to provide a framework for their effective regulation. A “dual market” refers to the existence of both a legal and an illegal market for a regulated product or service (for example, prescription drugs). These regulations exist in various countries for a...

The final report of project IARM presents an exploratory methodology for assessing the risk of money laundering (ML). In particular, it develops a composite indicator of money laundering risk at geographic area level and at business sector level. The methodology is tested in three pilot countries (Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom). The...

Project FIRE – Fighting Illicit firearms trafficking Routes and actors at European level (www.fireproject.eu) – was carried out with the financial support of the European Commission, DG Home Affairs, within the Prevention of and the Fight against Crime (ISEC) Programme. The research is an exploratory study on the illicit trafficking of firearms (I...

This chapter discusses the main characteristics of the crime proofing of legislation as a situational prevention measure to reduce the opportunities for crime inadvertently created by legislation. After outlining the precedents and framing it inside the European Union approach for crime prevention developed in the middle of 2000, the different step...

Over the years, a number of innovative approaches to learn about crime patterns for guiding and supporting crime prevention initiatives have been developed. In this collection we cover seven approaches: (1) offender-based research; (2) crime script analysis; (3) crime mapping and spatial analysis; (4) social network analysis; (5) agent-based modell...

The infiltration of organised crime in the legitimate economy has emerged as a transnational phenomenon. This book constitutes an unprecedented study of the involvement of criminal groups in the legitimate economy and their infiltration in legal businesses, and is the first to bridge the research gap between money laundering and organised crime. It...

The infiltration of organised crime in the legitimate economy has emerged as a transnational phenomenon. This book constitutes an unprecedented study of the involvement of criminal groups in the legitimate economy and their infiltration in legal businesses, and is the first to bridge the research gap between money laundering and organised crime. It...

This research is an exploratory study on the infiltration of organised crime groups (OCGs) in legal businesses. Infiltration occurs in every case in which a natural person belonging to a criminal organisation or acting on its behalf, or an already infiltrated legal person, invests financial and/or human resources to participate in the decision-maki...

This research is an exploratory study on the infiltration of organised crime groups (OCGs) in legal businesses. Infiltration occurs in every case in which a natural person belonging to a criminal organisation or acting on its behalf, or an already infiltrated legal person, invests financial and/or human resources to participate in the decision-maki...

Drawing on information taken from a recent Transcrime report on “Mafia Investments”, this article discusses the following topics: 1) the expansion of Italian mafias in Italy; 2) their criminal activities and related revenues; 3) how and where mafias invest these revenues. Going beyond the Transcrime report, this article will conclude by considering...

This book estimates the proceeds of crime and mafia revenues for different criminal markets such as sexual exploitation, drugs, illicit cigarettes, loan sharking, extortion racketeering, counterfeiting, illicit firearms, illegal gambling and illicit waste management. It is the first time that scholars have adopted detailed methodologies to ensure t...

This working paper aims at developing and testing a methodology for measuring Organized Crime (hereinafter OC) in a list of selected countries of the Latin American region. This study represents one of the first systematic attempts to obtain reliable and comparable measurement of OC presence and threats in the region. The outcomes will provide a mo...

INTRODUCTION Extortion is “the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right” (The United States Code 18 U.S.C. § 1951(b)(2)). The legal definitions of extortion in other countries are similar to the US. definition. When extortion is c...

This study concerns the crime proofing of the Proposal for the Revision of the Tobacco Products Directive presented in December 2012, and it is an update of a study on the crime proofing of the policy options under consideration of the revision of Directive 2001/37/EC.

Italian organized crime groups—namely, Cosa Nostra, the Camorra and the ‘Ndrangheta—have often been identified with the single name “mafia”. However, despite some similarities especially in the business of private protection, Italian mafias present several differences which become asymmetries due to a centralized anti-mafia legislation and a centra...

Measuring Organized Crime (OC) is a challenge that policy makers and law enforcement agencies have to face. Enhancing knowledge on Organized Crime is central for taking effective measures and reducing its human, social and economic consequences. This can be particularly important for Latin American and Caribbean countries, since most of them are af...

From the 1980s the international community has shown a growing concern about sea piracy, as a consequence of a significant rise of the recorded attacks. The security of maritime routes is indeed a matter of concern for states, as well as for trade companies whose vessels face the risk of being attacked and either robbed of the entire cargo or hijac...

Whilst any estimation of crime costs is a challenge even at a national level and in respect to crimes not particularly problematic from the definitional viewpoint, like volume crimes, the task is much harder when one has to deal with the harm caused by organised crime, especially from a comparative perspective. First, notwithstanding many internati...

In its blatant forms of sexual exploitation of women and children and the international slave labor market, human trafficking is a human rights crisis worldwide. Despite the efforts of governments, global law enforcement, and the UN, the phenomenon continues to grow at a staggering rate. The contributors to Measuring Human Trafficking pinpoint key...

Without Abstract

This article builds on the results of the European Union (EU) Crime Proofing Steering Group and of the Mechanisms for Assessing the Risk of Crime (MARC) project’s opening activities. It aims at setting an initial methodology for proofing EU legislation against economic and organised crime, which will be then tested and improved through the case stu...

The last meeting of the MARC Consortium Board (Paris, 27–28 October 2005) approved a general and flexible legislative crime risk mechanism which could be used for a variety of possible applications. Since then, further steps have been taken to implement the mechanism, and a pilot study on public procurement sector has been carried out to test its f...

Project MARC aims at developing a crime risk assessment mechanism to proof legislation against crime at a European Union level, the purpose being to explain and quantify the risk of unintended criminal implications/consequences produced by legislation. During the activities the mechanism has been improved and revised. This article describes these d...

The aim of Project MARC is to meet increasing demand by EU institutions for a crime risk assessment mechanism that proofs legislation against crime at a European Union level, thereby reducing the probability that regulation may provide opportunities for illicit conduct. On the basis of a literature review, case study analysis and interviews, this a...

This article presents quantitative and qualitative information about victims of human trafficking in Italy. It does so from the point of view of Italian judicial activities and draws on information from various sources: statistics on criminal proceedings, judicial cases from the Italian public prosecutors' offices handling the largest volume of pro...

The article deals with the impact of new technologies on crime. Specifically, the analysis develops two aspects: an analysis of how new technologies are reshaping criminal typologies, dynamics and trends; and an analysis of the most important challenges that legislation, law enforcement and science have to face in order to prevent and combat Inform...

Guido Rossi As Chairman of ISPAC, I want to thank all the contributors to this book that originates from the International Conference on Crime and Technology. This could be the end of my presentation if I did not feel uneasy not considering one of the problems I believe to be pivotal in the relationship between crime and technology. I shall also co...