The role of the Social Network Analysis to fight criminal organizations

The economic theory of crime considers a criminal to be a rational individual, a maximizing agent (that is, inclined to maximize his personal utility) and who is perfectly informed on the costs and benefits of his actions, or rather fully able to decide if and whether to assume a deviant behaviour (as stressed by sociologists, that is behaviour that violates the institutionalised expectations of a given social norm; in juridical terms, a crime) rather than to devote himself to a legal activity. Such abstraction involves a fundamental implication regarding the policy of prevention and fight against crime, in particular organised crime: if the choice to violate a norm is rational and sustained by a very serious evaluation of the consequent expected utility of this behaviour (and that is of its expected utility) a more rational system of penal justice is needed, to reduce its number. Nevertheless, nowadays it more often happens that the inconsistency, the complexity of the system, the length of the procedures and sometimes the lack of financial resources make it always more difficult to realise an incentive system of policies against organised crime. The paper aims at analysing the role of reusing for social purposes of the goods confiscated from criminal organisations, instituted in Italy by the Law n. 109, 7/03/1996, Dispositions for the management and destination of seized and confiscated goods). Using a theoretical model, based on the insights of the Social Network Analysis, this paper intends to show, first of all, that the confiscations of the illegal acquired goods can have a direct impact on the decision of the criminal agent, reducing the expected utility from illegal activities. Secondly, it tries to show that the reuse for social purposes of the aforementioned goods can produce a growth in the citizens mutual trust, by sustaining an alternative economy to that of the criminal one thus enabling to break the bond and the net that criminals use to maximise the utility function. Such institutions, in fact, if adequately disciplined, can produce a substitution effect which determines a change in the picture of the possible gains of the individual, inducing her to increase the effort in carrying out legal activities.