Effects of the new anti-mafia law on the proceeds of crime and on the Italian economy.

In 1982, the Italian authorities enacted a new law against the mafia conspiracy, which provided for the seizure and confiscation of property illegally acquired by criminals and their associates. This law is intended to strike at the accumulation of wealth of the mafiosi, which chiefly motivates their criminal activity. According to the established procedure, the district attorney or the chief of police are authorized to propose the seizure of property suspected of being derived from crimes, and a court of law decides either to accept or reject such a proposal and, where appropriate, orders the confiscation of illegally acquired assets. Two phenomena were identified, particularly in the southern part of Italy, which preceded the adoption of this new law: one was the establishment of an illegal sector of the economy with the development of a vast illicit market of drugs, and the other was an increase in the number of mafia firms and entrepreneurs. In some areas of western Sicily, for example at Palermo and Trapani, the income derived from illegal activities is estimated at approximately 15 to 20 per cent of the total gross income; the illicit sale of drugs nation-wide exceeds 10,000 billion lire, according to estimates. An assessment of the impact of the new law reveals positive results. In four provinces--Calabria, Campania, Lombardy and Sicily--property suspected of being derived from crimes was seized on 352 occasions and illegally acquired property was confiscated on 108 occasions during a period of 21 months following the adoption of the new law; 98 per cent of the seizures and all of the confiscations took place in the above-mentioned four provinces. The effective enforcement of the new law is, in the long run, expected to result in a movement from illegal to legal activity; if the risk involved in persisting in illegal activities becomes high enough, it should trigger a tendency towards avoiding involvement in the illegal activities and converting the assets into property shares protected by legal means. A certain tendency towards such "legalization" and investment in financial affairs rather than in real estate, agriculture and tertiary assets has already been observed. It is, however, unlikely that the mafia will be inclined to give up easily its profits derived from crime and its power of influence in society, and, consequently, it is expected that the confiscation of the illegally acquired properties will for a long time be the cornerstone of every effective struggle against criminal activity on a large scale.