For decades, Italy’s sprawling criminal syndicates – from Sicily’s Cosa Nostra to Calabria’s ’Ndrangheta – have survived not just through violence and money, but through something even more powerful: the family bond. The mafia’s most enduring strength lies in its ability to mold each generation from childhood, reproducing its hierarchies and loyalties across bloodlines. But today, a growing number of Italian lawmakers, prosecutors, activists, and social workers are trying to strike at this very core of organized crime, launching a controversial and unprecedented campaign to free children and mothers from mafia control.

At the center of this effort is Claudia Caramanna, head of Palermo’s juvenile prosecutor’s office. From her modest office overlooking the city’s juvenile prison, she has been driving one of Italy’s most ambitious child-protection strategies. Her goal is straightforward and radical: to break what she calls “the genetic code passed from parent to child that keeps the Cosa Nostra alive.” Since assuming her role in 2021, she has initiated hundreds of proceedings aimed at stripping mafia-aligned parents of their legal authority and relocating their children into safe environments – often foster families, protected communities, or distant relatives unconnected to organized crime.

For Caramanna, the stakes could not be higher. “Children raised in mafia families don’t have the freedom to choose a life without crime,” she insists. Each case she opens is intended to offer a new chance at autonomy for minors caught in the gravitational pull of the mafia world – a world where children may be involved in drug trafficking or extortion before adolescence, shielded from prosecution by their age and exploited by adults who understand the legal loopholes.

These children are groomed into obedience, violence, and silence. Caramanna’s mission is to sever that trajectory – but doing so requires navigating a system fraught with legal, moral, political, and emotional dilemmas.

The need for stronger protections has become increasingly urgent, especially for mothers trapped in mafia households. Many of these women parent alone while their partners serve long prison sentences for serious organized crime offenses. Attempting to break free often means risking retaliation from dangerous networks that view women and children as assets to maintain loyalty and cohesion.

A draft law now before the Italian Parliament........

© Blitz