Open AccessLife-Course Criminal Trajectories of Mafia Members
Author(s) -
Gian Maria Campedelli,
Francesco Calderoni,
Tommaso Comunale,
Cecilia Meneghini
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
crime and delinquency/crime and delinquency
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.431
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1552-387X
pISSN - 0011-1287
DOI - 10.1177/0011128719860834
Subject(s) - criminal justice , sanctions , life course approach , criminology , psychology , offender profiling , persistence (discontinuity) , course (navigation) , political science , computer security , law , social psychology , engineering , computer science , mechanical engineering , geotechnical engineering , visualization , aerospace engineering
Through a novel data set comprising the criminal records of 11,138 convicted mafia offenders, we compute criminal career parameters and trajectories through group-based trajectory modeling. Mafia offenders report prolific and persistent careers (16.1 crimes over 16.5 years on average), with five distinct trajectories (low frequency, high frequency, early starter, moderate persistence, high persistence). While showing some similarities with general offenders, the trajectories of mafia offenders also exhibit significant differences, with several groups offending well into their middle and late adulthood, notwithstanding intense criminal justice sanctions. These patterns suggest that several mafia offenders are life-course persisters and career criminals and that the involvement in the mafias is a negative turning point extending the criminal careers beyond those observed in general offenders.