‘The mafia does not exist’. This famous statement, pronounced by Supreme Court Judge Corrado Carnevale in 1988, sparked disbelief and outrage for years. However, over time, I began to see it differently. Every time I found myself abroad, those words echoed in my mind as a growing awareness.

Perhaps a simple conditional would have sufficed: ‘The mafia does not exist (…) if you do not understand it’. Understanding the mafia is not just about recognizing its most visible manifestations but about delving into its deeper dynamics.

There are three main levels of observation when analysing the mafia: legal, socio- cultural, and political.

From a legal standpoint, the crime of mafia association is an exclusively Italian legal construct. No other country has a stand- alone crime that specifically defines and punishes mafia as a conduct itself.

As a result, abroad, there are no convicted individuals, there are no investigations, there are no law enforcement operations addressing ‘the mafia’. In other words, from a judicial perspective, the mafia ‘does not exist’ outside Italy.

On a socio- cultural level, the mafia adapts to its surroundings, embedding itself into the social and cultural frameworks of the places where it operates. It does not have rigid, immutable characteristics; it has the ‘shape of the water’; it takes on the shape of its container; it camouflages itself within the environment, often rendering its presence invisible to those who lack the tools to recognize it.