Organised Crime in Italy: Mafia and Illegal Markets – Exception and Normality

In Europe and elsewhere, southern Italian mafia organisations have long been considered a paradigm of organised crime or tout court identified with it. In the core sections of this article (4 and 5), the specificities of the southern Italian mafia phenomenon are singled out and the other protagonists of organised crime active in the country are briefly described. (The comparative synthesis at the end of this Part will show that the Italian mafia is an inadequate paradigm for what is today understood as organised crime in Europe.) Before analysing Italian mafia organisations and other criminal groups, the second and third sections of the article briefly reconstruct the Italian discourse on organised crime and review official sources of information.