The Italy Judicial Council has issued a controversial directive that excludes northern districts — including Turin, Milan, and Bologna — from official designation as "high-density mafia zones," a move that critics warn will erode decades of progress in recognizing organized crime's expansion beyond its traditional southern strongholds.
Why This Matters
• Judicial appointments in northern districts will no longer prioritize anti-mafia experience when selecting top prosecutors.
• Economic infiltration by the 'Ndrangheta in Lombardy, Piedmont, and Veneto is well-documented, with 29.8 billion EUR in laundered money traced to the North between 2010 and 2024.
• Institutional recognition of organized crime's northern presence now faces a bureaucratic rollback despite mounting evidence from investigations and asset seizures.
A Classification That Ignores Reality
The Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura (CSM), the self-governing body of Italy's judiciary, approved the directive on June 11-12, 2026 as part of a broader reorganization of prosecutorial leadership. The list of "high-density mafia zones" now includes only 11 districts: Bari, Caltanissetta, Catania, Catanzaro, Lecce, Messina, Naples, Palermo, Reggio Calabria, Salerno, and Rome.
Conspicuously absent: Milan, Turin, Bologna, Venice, Genoa, and Florence — precisely the cities where investigators have documented systematic infiltration of legitimate business, logistics hubs, construction, and food supply chains by 'Ndrangheta, Camorra, and Cosa Nostra networks.
The directive's practical effect is immediate. In districts classified as high-density, judicial candidates with specialized anti-mafia experience gain significant advantage in leadership appointments. In excluded districts, that experience becomes largely irrelevant — a bureaucratic signal that organized crime is not a priority concern.
The Numbers Tell a Different Story
Italy's Direzione Investigativa Antimafia (DIA), the national anti-mafia intelligence agency, paints a starkly different picture. According to the 2024 DIA report, the North accounts for 14,375 money-laundering prosecutions and processed 421,557 suspicious transaction reports in 2024 alone, representing transactions worth 49.2 billion EUR.
The 'Ndrangheta — Calabria's most powerful mafia organization — operates 24 confirmed "locali" (territorial cells) across Lombardy, including 8 in the Milan metropolitan area alone. These cells control cocaine trafficking through Malpensa Airport and Milan's wholesale produce markets, which serve as logistical hubs for narcotics distribution across Europe.
In Veneto, so-called "indicator crimes" — extortion, usury, arson, bid-rigging — reached 27,743 cases in 2024, making the region Italy's third-highest for mafia infiltration markers. The provinces of Verona, Venice, and Vicenza recorded the steepest increases, with incidents surging 68% compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Piedmont, where the protest took place, has seen steady growth in asset seizures tied to organized crime. The Guardia di Finanza confiscated nearly 160 million EUR in mafia-linked assets nationwide in 2024, with a significant portion traced to northern businesses operating as fronts for money laundering.
What This Means for Residents
For those living in northern Italy, the CSM directive creates a paradox: the mafia is invisible to policymakers but omnipresent in the economy. Organized crime no longer relies on bombings or public assassinations to establish control. Instead, it leverages shell companies, fraudulent contracts, and legitimate-looking investments to penetrate sectors like real estate, hospitality, waste management, and public procurement.
The removal from high-risk classification may indirectly affect law enforcement priorities. If anti-mafia expertise is no longer a career advantage in northern districts, fewer prosecutors may specialize in complex financial investigations or cultivate the institutional knowledge required to dismantle transnational networks.
It also risks normalizing the presence of organized crime in daily life. When authorities signal that northern regions are not classified as mafia priority zones, businesses may lower their guard, municipal officials may overlook suspicious bidders, and banks may relax due diligence on questionable transactions.
Institutional Backlash and Protest
On the morning of June 18, 2026, members of Libera — the anti-mafia association founded by Don Luigi Ciotti — gathered outside Turin's courthouse to denounce the directive. Similar protests unfolded in Bologna, Reggio Emilia, Genoa, Milan, Venice, and Florence under the slogan "Non solo Sud. Le mafie sono anche qui" ("Not only the South. The mafias are here too").
Lucia Musti, the Procurator General of Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta, issued a rare public rebuke of the CSM, warning that the decision risks "a society that either underestimates the phenomenon or actively collaborates with the clans." She emphasized that decades of investigative work and court rulings confirm the structural presence of mafia organizations in the North.
Sociologist Nando Dalla Chiesa, a leading expert on organized crime and son of slain anti-mafia general Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, expressed disbelief at the directive, questioning "in what world do these people live?" He noted that Milan is now a hub where 'Ndrangheta, Camorra, and Cosa Nostra not only coexist but actively cooperate — an unprecedented alliance documented in the ongoing "Hydra" trial.
Even within the CSM, internal messages obtained by journalists reveal that some magistrates privately condemned the decision, accusing the council of minimizing the danger and ignoring its own source material. The directive claims to be based on DIA reports and the 2022-2024 balance sheet from the Direzione Nazionale Antimafia (DNA), yet those same documents describe in detail the northward expansion of criminal syndicates.
The Political Dimension
Davide Mattiello, president of Articolo 21 Piedmont and justice coordinator for the Partito Democratico (PD) in the region, called the directive "anachronistic" and accused the CSM of betraying the legacy of anti-mafia icons Giovanni Falcone and Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa. He invoked the prophetic image of writer Leonardo Sciascia, who described the mafia as "a palm tree climbing 50 centimeters every year" — a slow, silent growth that eventually dominates the landscape.
Mattiello also referenced the 2026 justice referendum, in which over 15 million Italians voted against reforms perceived as undermining judicial independence. He argued that the CSM's directive reflects a disconnect between the judiciary and public perception, urging council members not to "turn up their noses" at grassroots mobilization.
CGIL, one of Italy's largest trade unions, displayed banners at the Turin protest, signaling organized labor's concern that mafia infiltration in construction and logistics threatens worker rights and job security.
A Question of Narrative
The controversy hinges not just on administrative categories but on narrative power. For decades, anti-mafia prosecutors and activists have worked to shift public perception of organized crime from a southern problem to a national emergency. The CSM directive reverses that trajectory, implicitly endorsing the outdated view that mafias are territorially confined to their regions of origin.
This perception gap has real consequences. Polls and investigations find that a significant percentage of Italians believe the mafia is present in their communities, with the Milan-Turin axis registering particularly high concern. Yet institutional recognition lags behind public awareness, creating a credibility gap that organized crime can exploit.
The 'Ndrangheta's success in the North stems precisely from its ability to operate below the radar — no shootouts, no headlines, just quiet domination of supply chains, construction contracts, and financial flows. By declaring these regions outside priority classification, the CSM may inadvertently provide cover for further infiltration.
The Legal Framework and Its Limits
The CSM's criteria define a high-density zone as requiring "significant and stable elements" of structural mafia presence, territorial diffusion beyond isolated incidents, and demonstrable capacity to influence economy, public administration, and local institutions. Critics argue this standard is met and exceeded in northern districts, pointing to hundreds of interdiction orders (bans on public contracts), confiscated businesses, and dozens of ongoing trials.
Yet the directive's authors appear to have weighted violent crime and traditional territorial control more heavily than economic infiltration and money laundering — precisely the methods that define contemporary mafia activity in the North.
This legal conservatism mirrors broader tensions within Italy's judiciary over how to adapt anti-mafia tools designed for Cosa Nostra's rural Sicily to the globalized financial networks of the 'Ndrangheta.
What Comes Next
The CSM directive is now in force, but political and judicial pressure may force a revision. Libera has called for sustained mobilization, and several regional governments are considering formal requests for clarification. Some legal scholars suggest that the Direzione Nazionale Antimafia could issue its own guidance emphasizing northern threats, creating a parallel framework that local prosecutors could reference.
For residents and businesses, the practical advice remains unchanged: scrutinize partners, report suspicious activity, and support transparency in public procurement. The mafia's power depends on silence and complicity. Whether or not the CSM acknowledges the threat, the threat remains real.
