New research reveals how violence 'spreads' 'contagiously' among members of organized crime groups in Italy, where committing violent crimes within a group makes mafia members more likely to commit further acts of violence in the future.
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Two scientists from two universities - one in Great Britain and one in Italy - analyzed data about nearly 10,000 convicted Italian mobsters and almost 180,000 convictions, most of them men born between 1950 and 1980 and who committed crimes such as murder, assault, robbery and more between 1964 and 2016, and found that these Those who previously committed acts of violence together with others were 3 times more likely to engage in violence again compared to those whose first crimes were committed 'solo'.
"The dynamics of violence 'spread' throughout the mafia, similar to a virus. People may encourage each other, and give each other more motivation to be violent," explains the study's author, Dr. Cecilia Meneghini from the University of Exeter. The group activity creates, according to the researchers, a dynamic that encourages violent crimes future in collaboration with other group members. This leads to subsequent group crimes being 4 times more common than 'solo' crimes in the data studied. The researchers noted that both group violence and 'solo' violence lead to a higher probability of future group violence, only previous 'solo' violence led to more 'solo' violence later on.This challenges the notion that violence simply spreads from groups to individuals, and shows that people who are used to committing crimes in a group will not start committing crimes alone.
The author of the study, Dr. Francesco Calderoni from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, claims that the mafia environment promotes joint crimes. "Joining the mafia affects the individual's social status and self-concept, and evokes obligations and relationships relevant to crimes.
These include joint crimes, and especially crimes of participation in violence." One of the challenges facing the law is the attempt to break this dynamic, to remove people from the cycle of violence and curb organized crime.
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