According to data, the number of robberies in Italy dropped to around 20 thousand between August 2020 and July 2021. The value peaked at 44 thousand robberies between 2012 and 2013.

According to data published by the Ministry of Justice, property crime was the most common crime charged in Italy.

The datasets reported relate to criminal networks directly obtained from Court data:

• Meetings dataset, accounts for the physical meetings among suspected (police stakeout). It is composed by 101 nodes and 256 edges.
• Phone Calls dataset refers to phone calls among individuals (police eavesdropping). It is composed by 100 nodes and 124 edges.
• Roles dataset address the role of the suspected as well as their relationship with the other suspected, and the request from the judge (e.g. arrested/in jail/etc.).

Meetings and Phone Calls datasets have in common 47 nodes (i.e., suspected).

“Our datasets were derived from the pre-trial detention order issued by the Court of Messina’s preliminary investigation judge on March 14, 2007, which was towards the end of the major anti-mafia operation referred to as “Montagna Operation”. This operation was concluded in 2007 by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Messina (Sicily) and was conducted by the Special Operations Unit of the Italian Police (the R.O.S. Reparto Operativo Speciale of the Carabinieri is specializing in anti-Mafia investigations). This particular investigation was a prominent operation focused on two Mafia clans, known as the “Mistretta” family and the “Batanesi clan”. From 2003 to 2007, these families were found to had infiltrated several economic activities including major infrastructure works, through a cartel of entrepreneurs close to the Sicilian Mafia.” (From https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.05303)

For more details, please refer to:

• Journal publication PLoS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/citation?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0236476
• Preliminary analysis in our conference paper: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-36683-4_36
• Our pre-print on ArXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.05303
• Our GitHub Repository: https://github.com/lcucav/networkdistruption

This comparative research has examined two political insurgency cases: paramilitary groups in the Northern Ireland conflict and the Red Brigades in Italy; and two organised crime groups in Italy. By comparing illegal violent political groups and criminals this project has first shown the many variables affecting recruitment under the primary conditions dictated by violence and illegality when the size, the military strategy and the goal of the groups are substantially different. Second this research shows how despite those many differences common patterns of how organisations screen their recruits and how potential members signal their “fitness” to join can be identified.

Primary and secondary data have been gathered from in-depth qualitative interviews, judicial reports, newspaper articles and published biographies. This dataset contains only the data for Bari, Italy with 740 male records and 161 female records.

The aim of this project was to analyse recruitment into illegal organisations that use violence for political or criminal goals. While these groups differ in their aims, structures and constraints — and these differences must of course affect the way they recruit — they all share the need to find trustworthy, loyal and competent members. Moreover, the crude reality of life in the underworld, where there is little evidence of "loyalty amongst thieves" makes the need for a selection process more immediate and therefore clearer to observe. This project investigated recruitment from both `supply' and 'demand' perspective by addressing two core questions: what are the features of those who volunteer to join an illegal organisation and how recruiters and volunteers assess each other's trustworthiness This comparative research has examined two political insurgency cases: paramilitary groups in the Northern Ireland conflict and the Red Brigades in Italy; and two organised crime groups in Italy. By comparing illegal violent political groups and criminals this project has first shown the many variables affecting recruitment under the primary conditions dictated by violence and illegality when the size, the military strategy and the goal of the groups are substantially different. Second this research shows how despite those many differences common patterns of how organisations screen their recruits and how potential members signal their "fitness" to join can be identified.