What happened to the Godfather? The vicissitudes ofrestitutive justice in Southwestern Sicily

Professor Naor H. Ben-Yehoyada
Columbia University
 

In a key site of Anti-/mafia in Sicily, administrative courts order to seize assets of suspected mafiosi or their affiliates (~$10 Billion to date), which become permanently confiscated upon conviction (~$5 Billion), and can subsequently be assigned to cooperatives and voluntary organizations for social use. This vast-scale restitutive justice project has transformed allegiances and alliances in southwestern Sicily. This paper examines how these transformations have affected the balance within the perennial binary vision of Cosa Nostra: as criminal power and/or as a criminal organization, especially the trending criticism against the persons leading the administration and reuse of confiscated assets.