Intelligence against international mafia-like criminal organizations

The Italian Mafias no longer operate at a national level, but their interests and traffics extend worldwide. They have taken advantage of globalisation by exporting their methods and activities and exploiting those countries with more favourable conditions. The globalised dimension of the Mafias inevitably requests countries to cooperate and take necessary measures. For many years, the Italian judicial system and police forces have felt the necessity for increasing cooperation among all the institutional actors appointed to contrast mafia-like organizations. Therefore, criminal intelligence is important to understand the Mafias’ complex structure, extension, and high level of infiltration of different sectors and help law enforcement develop effective contrast strategies. The study of current methodologies in anti-mafia intelligence has shown the need for a centralised tool to coordinate ongoing state investigations and provide tactical and operational intelligence. The adoption of a new model of analysis based on structured data could avoid the dispersion of information and trace the current state of mafia-like criminal organizations at any time. Indeed, the organization of a database on three categories (event, subject, criminal family) is necessary to extrapolate data and conduct cross-analysis. In fact, intelligence tends to build a model of the existing reality to understand it, allowing all the pieces of the puzzle to be put together to get the complete picture.