This paper presents a Campbell systematic review aimed at (1) summarizing the empirical evidence from quantitative, mixed methods, and qualitative studies on the individual‐level risk factors associated with the recruitment into organized crime, (2) assessing the relative strength of the risk factors from quantitative studies across different factor
categories
The review identified 52 quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods studies meeting all eligibility criteria.
19 quantitative studies allowed the extraction of 346 effect sizes. The data synthesis relied on multiple random effects meta‐analyses with inverse variance weighting. Mixed methods and qualitative studied were used to inform, contextualize, and expand the analysis of quantitative studies.
The amount and the quality of available evidence were weak, and most studies had a high risk‐of‐bias. Most independent measures were correlates, with possible issues in establishing a causal relation with organized crime membership.
We found relatively strong evidence that being male, prior criminal activity, and prior violence are associated with higher odds of future organized crime recruitment. There was weak evidence, although supported by qualitative studies, prior narrative reviews, and findings from correlates, that prior sanctions, social relations with organized crime involved subjects, and a troubled family environment are associated with greater odds of recruitment.

Criminal careers do not evolve in a vacuum. Individuals are affected by the societal and criminal justice changes and this reflects in their offending patterns. The Italian mafiosi are an interesting case as Italy has substantially increased its anti-mafia action since 1982 by introducing new offences, increasing penalties, improving law enforcement agencies and prosecutor's offices, introducing pervasive seizure and confiscation and strict prison regimes.
This paper explores the changes in the criminal careers of more than 11 thousand Italian mafia offenders born in six different periods (before the 1940, in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and in the 1980s and later). It compares some simple parameters of their offending patterns (e.g. age of onset, violence, first mafia offence) and also their prison experience to explore the impact of the changes in the Italian criminal justice antimafia action on the criminal careers of mafia offenders.

Previous research has shown that co-offending encourages the commission of violent crimes due to mechanisms of collective behavior and social contagion. Both co-offending and violence can be considered as defining features of the behavior of organized crime offenders. Nevertheless, organized crime research has focused more on analyzing violent outcomes of the criminal group as a whole rather than studying the individual-level transmission of violence within the criminal organization. In this study, we adopt a longitudinal perspective to study the impact of co-offending on the individual probability to engage in violence. We leverage a large data set including all the crimes committed by organized crime offenders in Italy to reconstruct the offenders’ criminal careers. We then rely on Markov chain models and dynamic random-effect probit regressions to analyze the sequential offending behavior of offenders and estimate the impact of co-offending on the probability to commit violence in future offending periods. Results highlight the lasting impact of co-offending on the chances to engage in violent forms of delinquency in the future.

This presentation compares the criminal careers of two sample of organized crime offenders: one of Italian mafia offenders and one of Dutch organized crime offenders.
The samples are matched to ensure that they have similar distributions in the decades of birth of the offenders.
We examine the similarities and differences across several criminal careers parameters including the age of onset, career duration, number of crimes, number of violent crimes, types of offences and diversification, and seriousness.
The findings offer insight on the criminal careers within very different types of organized crime. Notwithstanding the differences, the two samples report interesting similarities, suggesting that the analysis of criminal careers can help understanding the involvement in organized crime.