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The problem of link prediction has recently received increasing attention from scholars in network science. In social network analysis, one of its aims is to recover missing links, namely connections among actors which are likely to exist but have not been reported because data are incomplete or subject to various types of uncertainty. In the field of criminal investigations, problems of incomplete information are encountered almost by definition, given the obvious anti-detection strategies set up by criminals and the limited investigative resources. In this paper, we work on a specific dataset obtained from a real investigation, and we propose a strategy to identify missing links in a criminal network on the basis of the topological analysis of the links classified as marginal, i.e. removed during the investigation procedure. The main assumption is that missing links should have opposite features with respect to marginal ones. Measures of node similarity turn out to provide the best characterization in this sense. The inspection of the judicial source documents confirms that the predicted links, in most instances, do relate actors with large likelihood of co-participation in illicit activities.

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.

Background Studies from multiple contexts conceptualize organized crime as comprising different types of criminal organizations and activities. Notwithstanding growing scientific interest and increasing number of policies aiming at preventing and punishing organized crime, little is known about the specific processes that lead to recruitment into organized crime. Objectives This systematic review aimed at (1) summarizing the empirical evidence from quantitative, mixed methods, and qualitative studies on the individual‐level risk factors associated with the recruitment into organized crime, (2) assessing the relative strength of the risk factors from quantitative studies across different factor categories and subcategories and types of organized crime. Methods We searched published and unpublished literature across 12 databases with no constraints as to date or geographic scope. The last search was conducted between September and October 2019. Eligible studies had to be written in English, Spanish, Italian, French, and German. Selection Criteria Studies were eligible for the review if they: Reported on organized criminal groups as defined in this review. Investigated recruitment into organized crime as one of its main objectives. Provided quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods empirical analyses. Discussed sufficiently well‐defined factors leading to recruitment into organized crime. Addressed factors at individual level. For quantitative or mixed‐method studies, the study design allowed to capture variability between organized crime members and non‐members. Data Collection and Analysis From 51,564 initial records, 86 documents were retained. Reference searches and experts' contributions added 116 additional documents, totaling 202 studies submitted to full‐text screening. Fifty‐two quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods studies met all eligibility criteria. We conducted a risk‐of‐bias assessment of the quantitative studies while we assessed the quality of mixed methods and qualitative studies through a 5‐item checklist adapted from the CASP Qualitative Checklist. We did not exclude studies due to quality issues. Nineteen quantitative studies allowed the extraction of 346 effect sizes, classified into predictors and correlates. The data synthesis relied on multiple random effects meta‐analyses with inverse variance weighting. The findings from mixed methods and qualitative studied were used to inform, contextualize, and expand the analysis of quantitative studies. Results The amount and the quality of available evidence were weak, and most studies had a high risk‐of‐bias. Most independent measures were correlates, with possible issues in establishing a causal relation with organized crime membership. We classified the results into categories and subcategories. Despite the small number of predictors, we found relatively strong evidence that being male, prior criminal activity, and prior violence are associated with higher odds of future organized crime recruitment. There was weak evidence, although supported by qualitative studies, prior narrative reviews, and findings from correlates, that prior sanctions, social relations with organized crime involved subjects, and a troubled family environment are associated with greater odds of recruitment. Authors' Conclusions The available evidence is generally weak, and the main limitations were the number of predictors, the number of studies within each factor category, and the heterogeneity in the definition of organized crime group. The findings identify few risk factors that may be subject to possible preventive interventions.

ObjectivesPrevious research underscores the influence of prior violent co-offending on subsequent violent behavior, linking it to a social contagion mechanism akin to the internalization of violence. However, these studies are limited by disregarding the entirety of a criminal career and overlooking diverse co-offending dynamics beyond co-offenders’ characteristics. This study examines the longitudinal impact of prior violent (solo and co-) offending on future individual-level violent behavior among Italian organized crime offenders.MethodsLeveraging criminal career data from 9819 Italian organized crime offenders, we model offending choices through a discrete-time Markov process. Subsequently, employing dynamic random-effects probit models, we quantify the influence of prior violent (solo and co-) offending on future violence, considering various confounders and unobserved individual-level effects.ResultsViolence is a persistent and long-lasting behavior among organized crime offenders. Prior violent co-offending has a greater impact than prior violent solo offending on the probability of future violence. Prior violent co-offending increases the probability of future violent co-offending but does not impact the probability of future violent solo offending.ConclusionsThe results show that co-offending promotes the transmission of violence but fail to support the internalization of violent behavior postulated by prior studies. We propose possible alternative mechanisms of violence transmission that operate through self-sustaining dynamics of violent co-offending within criminal groups. Although limited data on individual characteristics constrains interpretation, our results imply that violence transmission dynamics are independent from the individual characteristics of the co-offenders and more directly connected to group effects.

Criminal leaders enhance their social capital by strategically brokering information among associates. To balance security and efficiency, leaders may favor meetings instead of telephones, potentially affecting analyses relying solely on wiretap data. Yet, few studies explored criminal leaders’ use of meetings in the management of criminal groups. We analyze criminal leaders’ participation in meetings and telephone calls in four distinct investigations. For each case, we extracted meetings and wiretap networks, analyzed leaders’ network positioning and identified leadership roles through logistic regressions relying on network centrality. Results show that leaders minimize telephone use (20% missing in wiretap net-works), and act as brokers, particularly in meeting networks (betweenness 18 times higher than non-leaders). Regressions on meeting networks identify leaders more effectively than wiretap networks, with betweenness centrality as the strongest predictor of leadership. Leaders’ centrality in meetings shows their strategic brokering position and the social embeddedness of criminal groups. While meeting participation is a sign of power, it is also a social obligation that leaders can hardly minimize. This makes them more visible, with possible benefits to investigations and intelligence.

Bid-rigging harms economies and societies. While existing research has primarily focused on quantifying the economic damages resulting from bid-rigging cartels, there is a relative dearth of studies exploring how firms interact and the specific techniques they use to rig tenders. Our paper examines the bidding behaviours associated with bid-rigging. Specifically, we investigate how cartel companies exploit legal opportunities, engage in joint and similar bidding and adapt tactics based on the number of colluding bidders. Our study relies on judicial evidence and a dataset of 1,242 companies (including 112 colluding entities) participating in 357 roadwork bid auctions in Italy. Through bootstrap logistic regressions, we analyse company-level indicators and their association with cartel involvement. The results reveal that cartels frequently exploit subcontracts and price similarity. Moreover, we find that bid-rigging tactics vary depending on the number of bidding cartel companies involved. When colluding companies are the majority of bidders, cartels rely on widespread member participation to cover a broad range of prices. Conversely, when cartel companies constitute less than half of the bidders, they tend to form temporary associations. These findings untangle the complexity inherent in cartel agreements and strategies, highlighting the importance of assessing firm interactions and relational patterns within co-bidding networks for a comprehensive understanding of collusive dynamics.

The growing research on co-offending over the life course is based on relatively small, general offending samples, followed for a short period, and from a limited set of countries. This study expands current knowledge by examining the relation of co-offending with age, criminal experience, crime type, and crime seriousness in a large sample of Italian serious organized crime offenders with criminal careers spanning between age 14 and late adulthood. The sample includes 160,262 offenses by 10,530 Italian mafia offenders. After preliminary descriptive statistics, random-effects logistic regressions estimate how age, criminal experience, crime type, and seriousness are independently related to the co-offending probability. Co-offending decreases only moderately with both the age and criminal experience of organized crime offenders, while more prolific offenders exhibit a stable co-offending prevalence as their experience increases. Co-offending varies significantly by crime type, and it is more frequent for more serious offenses. In line with previous research, co-offending has a relevant functional component even for organized crime offenders: results suggest it is instrumental to perpetrating specific offense types and more serious offenses. However, results also show that specific social and criminal contexts promote co-offending among older and more experienced offenders.

While indicators assessing the quality of life often comprise measures of crime or fear of crime, these components usually refer to property or violent crimes. More complex crimes, which may significantly impact on the social, economic, and political conditions of local communities, are often overlooked, mostly due to problems in adequately measuring the levels of e.g. organised crime and corruption. Indeed, despite the growing scholarly attention, measurements of organised crime are rare and frequently affected by important methodological limitations. This study addresses this issue by proposing the Mafia Presence Index (MPI), a composite indicator measuring the presence of the mafias in Italy. The MPI aggregates variables measuring different dimensions of mafia presence, namely the presence and activities of mafia groups, mafia violence, and infiltration in politics and the economy. Furthermore, the analysis explores the validity and robustness of the MPI by considering possible alternative variables and by assessing the impact of different calculation strategies. Results show that the MPI is a parsimonious and consistent measure of mafia presence, relying on a core set of five variables directly related to mafia presence. The index is also robust to different calculation methods and is negatively associated with the most popular indexes measuring the quality of life in Italy.

Objectives What drives the consumption of illicit cigarettes? While criminology has rarely addressed the divers of the illicit cigarette markets from a theoretical and empirical perspective, studies from other disciplines point to two classes of causes. Some studies stress the impact of cigarette prices and taxes on the market for illicit cigarette; others emphasize the importance of different non-price factors, including informal economy and corruption. This study tests the influence of both price and non-price factors on the illicit cigarette market. Methods Multilevel growth curve analysis—three-level MLM for longitudinal measures—of the illicit cigarette market at the subnational level in the European Union. The analysis focuses on 247 regions in the EU between 2007 and 2013. Results This study shows that both price and non-price factors influence illicit cigarette consumption. Lower affordability of legal products, proximity to sources of cheap cigarettes, higher national income inequality, greater population density, and the levels of illicit cigarettes in neighboring regions are associated with higher illicit consumption. On the contrary, there is no empirical evidence of the role of two ‘usual suspects’: corruption and shadow economy. The paper also shows that the market for illegal cigarettes is shaped by both demand and supply factors. Conclusions The geographic concentration of illicit consumption and smuggling calls for the creation of anti-illicit-trade units in most densely populated areas or custom task forces at the most sensitive borders. The disproportionate relevance of illicit flows from eastern non-EU countries suggests to increase the political pressure on these source countries. Finally, given the importance of the demand side in determining the size of the illicit market, price increases should be matched with consumer awareness campaigns. These campaigns should focus on the societal consequences of purchasing illicit cigarettes together with illustrating the harm of consuming tobacco products.