Abstract
This chapter presents a systematic review of the social, psychological, and economic factors relating to involvement and recruitment into organized crime groups (OCGs), including mafias, drug trafficking organizations (DTOs), gangs, and other criminal organizations. This review has three objectives: (i) identifying the most commonly reported factors leading to recruitment into OCGs, (ii) highlighting whether these factors are independent of one other or they are correlated, and (iii) assessing the validity and generalizability of research findings. The review searched all possible relevant studies indexed in selected databases and published in five languages (i.e. English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish), without limitations as to their year of publication or geographic origin. Starting from 48,731 potentially eligible records, integrated with experts’ suggestions, this systematic review includes 47 empirical studies employing quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods approaches. The findings show that social and economic factors are the most commonly reported factors relating to recruitment into OCGs, while psychological factors are marginal. Although factors are highly interrelated and shared across OCGs, their predominance varies across types of criminal organizations. For instance, individuals join mafias and gangs attracted by strong group identity, whereas individuals enter DTOs mainly for financial gain. In light of these findings, recommendations for future research and implications for prevention policies are discussed.
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Notes
- 1.
Involvement into OC also takes place through leisure activities, because of life events or through deliberate recruitment by criminal organizations. For more details, see Kleemans and Van Koppen (2014).
- 2.
Previous systematic reviews have focused on youth gang membership and interventions (Hodgkinson et al. 2009; Klein and Maxson 2006). The Campbell Collaboration, for example, has published two systematic reviews on the involvement of young people in gangs (Fisher et al. 2008a, b), and more recently one on predictors of youth gang membership in low- and middle-income countries (Higginson et al. 2014). These reviews did not consider the factors relating to membership in other types of groups involved in crime, namely OCGs.
- 3.
This choice is also due to the fact that the literature generally considers youth street gangs as different from OCGs (Decker and Pyrooz 2014). Furthermore, a recent systematic review has already assessed the factors leading to youth gang membership (Higginson et al. 2014). Similarly, while there is a relevant literature on prison gangs, this field is mostly separate from the literature on OC, which emphasizes the social embeddedness and the role of ties with the legitimate world. Prison gangs, on the contrary, occur in a specific and institutionalized settings and recruitment is influenced by contextual factors (Blevins et al. 2010; Wood et al. 2014).
- 4.
English: Criminal Justice Abstracts; Open Grey; Social Sciences Premium, NJCRS, PsycInfo, Abi/Inform, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences, Public Health Database, Military Database, EconLit, PsycArticles; PubMed; Scopus; Web of Science. French: Google Scholar; Sudoc.Abes. German: Sowiport. Italian: Riviste Web. Spanish: Liliacs; Latin America & Iberia Database.
Dutch was excluded from the search as contacts with Dutch scholars confirmed that empirical studies in this field have also been published in English.
- 5.
The experts that contributed to this systematic review are: Jay Albanese (Virginia Commonwealth University, USA), Paolo Campana (University of Cambridge, UK), Scott Decker (Arizona State University, USA), Edward Kleemans (Vrije University of Amsterdam, NL), Klaus Von Lampe (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, USA), Carlo Morselli (University of Montreal, CA), Letizia Paoli (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, BE), David Pyrooz (University of Colorado Boulder, USA), Sonja Wolf (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, MEX).
- 6.
The included studies meet the quality criteria set out by an adapted version of the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (2017) for qualitative studies.
- 7.
This systematic review was conducted following in part the guidelines provided by the Campbell Collaboration–an international research network promoting and producing systematic reviews–as Campbell reviews are based solely on quantitative findings as primary basis for conclusions. For more details, see https://www.campbellcollaboration.org/library/campbell-collaboration-systematic-reviews-policies-and-guidelines.html
- 8.
The journals are: British Journal of Criminology; Crime Law & Social Change; Trends in Organized Crime; European Journal of Criminology; Global Crime; Canadian Journal of Criminology; Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health; Criminology; European Sociological Review; International Journal of Social Psychology; Journal of Criminal Justice; Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization; Justice Policy Journal; Law & Society Review; Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management; Research and Reports in Forensic Medical Science; Revista Electrónica de Ciencia Penal y Criminología; Social Problems; The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice.
- 9.
Criminological theory states that ethnic heterogeneity coupled with low economic status, residential mobility, and family disruption lead to increases in crime rates among neighborhoods (Shaw and McKay 1972). Subcultural theories explain crime involvement among lower-class individuals belonging to ethnic minorities as a result of frustration and/or reaction to the dominant culture (Cloward and Ohlin 1960; Cohen 1955; Miller 1958).
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Comunale, T., Calderoni, F., Marchesi, M., Superchi, E., Campedelli, G.M. (2020). Systematic Review of the Social, Psychological and Economic Factors Relating to Involvement and Recruitment into Organized Crime. In: Weisburd, D., Savona, E.U., Hasisi, B., Calderoni, F. (eds) Understanding Recruitment to Organized Crime and Terrorism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36639-1_8
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