Vol. 10 No. 10 (October 2000) p. 555-557.

THE ANTIMAFIA: ITALY'S FIGHT AGAINST ORGANIZED CRIME by Alison Jamieson. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. 235pp. $45.00. ISBN 0-312-22911-9.

Reviewed by Caryl Lynn Segal, Criminology and Criminal Justice Program, University of Texas at Arlington.

Alison Jamieson is exceptionally well-informed about organized crime and drugs in Italy. She has utilized these strands of knowledge to weave an intricate web illustrating the unyielding grasp of the Mafia, the generic term she uses to represent the organized crime that, in all its permutations, infiltrates and terrorizes all layers of Italian life and society. Luciano Violante's "Foreword" sets the stage for Jamieson's tale,. "When people describe the Mafia they often use terms such as 'octopus' or 'cancer.' Nothing could be further from the truth. The use of these expressions makes the Mafia seem mysterious, omnipotent, uncatchable - precisely the image that the MAFIOSI want people to have about their organization. As this book shows, the reality is rather different. The Mafia is composed of men, arms, money, and political relationships. We need to arrest those men, destroy their arms, confiscate that money, and break up those political relationships. The Italian experience shows that it is possible, but also teaches us that it will take more time, as well as an exceptional degree of international cooperation, before we can claim a final victory. When the Mafia goes through moments of crisis, it hides and waits for better times to come. For this reason one should not misinterpret the Mafia's silence as its defeat. Nor should one have a 'national' vision of the Mafia-type organizations, since they exist and are active in most of the developed world as well as in developing countries."

In her Introduction Jamieson details the objective of her study. "The aim of this book is to evaluate the successes -- and the failures -- of Italy's antimafia fight since 1992 and to analyse (sic) the impact of the antimafia movement upon the Mafia phenomenon. The different forms of Italy's response to the atrocities of 1992 are broken down into four principal types -- political, law enforcement, civic or grassroots, and international. All four are necessary for a comprehensive response, but political efforts predominate, since they are the engine of the antimafia movement: they provide the ideological context, legislative framework and resources within which law enforcement must operate; they are the principal stimulus for international cooperation and they serve as facilitators for social and community-based initiatives" (pp. xx-xxi).

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However, unlike Violante's straightforward depiction of what the "Mafia" is, Jamieson drowns the reader in layer upon layer of places and names. One major theme that is heard time and again is the need for a group fighting corruption to be proactive and not reactive. The astute reader discovers that organized crime substitutes itself in any function where the State's hold is weak. Whether the weakness appears in an area of maintaining public order or economic regulation or the administration of justice, Jamieson's generic Mafia steps into the breach. Thus it appears the first proactive steps that must be taken involve bolstering and shoring up every area of state responsibility to eliminate the weaknesses that can be utilized. Vacuums no longer exist where the group is able to insert itself.

By detailing how the murder of two judges broke the complacency of the Italian citizenry and generated a demand that the antimafia group take the steps necessary to free Italy from organized crime's stranglehold, Jamieson describes how the antimafia crusade began. However, laws are, and always will be, mere words on pieces of paper until interpreted by the judiciary. Therefore, as Jamieson reveals, the legislative reluctance to pass "no loopholes" laws aimed at putting organized crime's leaders away for decades, if not for life, the enormity of the problem of bolstering state authority becomes apparent. What is not apparent is what caused dedicated lawmen to continue the fight as the odds of their own personal survival shrank hourly and they realized that support for their efforts had waned. Governmental security details, no matter how large, are shown to be inefficient, often because of infiltration that reveals the details of the security net to the Mafia. Also, headlines blared the names of the newly deceased members of law enforcement and no sooner are they buried than others step forward to pick up the gauntlet.

Indeed, the reader cannot help but be awed by the resilience of those who played vital roles in Italy's fight against organized crime. The number of governmental players killed, the revelation of large-scale corruption are bumps in the road compared to the frightening realization that some of the judiciary had also become corrupted.

The reader learns, also, that there is a concerted Mafia effort to involve persons in extorting business, corrupting both public officials and law enforcement personnel, and infiltrating public works contracts through privileged channels of access. By skillfully blending the legal and illegal sectors of the operation, the Mafia additionally makes identifying and prosecuting organized crime an onerous task.

Although Jamieson burdens the reader with too much information about people and places that produces a cacophony of sound without meaning, after seven years of victories and defeats too numerous to mention, she reveals the bottom line. Since there are always younger ambitious leaders-to-be waiting in the wings for the clamor to die down and the process of corruption to move forward once again, the fight is far from over.

Yet, Italy's antimafia efforts must be applauded for the success they have had rather than denigrated for its many failures. If there is a lesson to be learned from this book, it is the necessity of patience and fortitude. The game of cat and mouse continues to this day with no one able to

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predict the eventual winner. However, every time the prison doors clang shut behind another major member of the Mafiosi, the forces of good take one small step. One can only hope that eventually the group's back will be broken and its resurgence capabilities will disappear.

Jamieson has done an extraordinary job. Thus a major contribution that Jamieson makes is to illustrate how other societies will need to organize themselves in order to prevent this type of take-over. One need only look at the current Russian Mafia to see how the State's weakness creates their strength. Also, the parallel between the Italian experience and that of the Colombians in their fight against the Cali cartel is so very similar that it appears as if one blueprint has been passed along from one organized crime group to another.

However, from the first page to the last, this reviewer was unable to find the answer to a simple question: Who is the intended audience for the book? The lack of focus on a specific audience weakened the book, in this reviewer's opinion. The second weakness was the over-abundance of details about all the players, major and minor, without any framework into which the reader could plug the pieces and reveal the dynamics. Scholars and students, reading about events in another land, without any background information at the outset, are disadvantaged. It is incumbent upon the writer to introduce the players in a meaningful manner and to help the reader to discern which actions are of great importance. Jamieson, unfortunately, offers no guidance to the reader, nor does she provide any analytical commentary that might have made this a better offering.

This book could probably be used effectively as supplemental reading in a comparative criminal justice or procedures course. There is information about the effect of the Italian judicial system and its revised Code and how these were utilized in the antimafia fight. Although the fight is not over, the battles offer guidance to others who desire to wage war against organized crime in their midst.


Copyright 2000 by the author, Caryl Lynn Segal.