CRÓNICAS ANTIMAFIA

Selling a confiscated asset can recover money. Returning it to society can mean much more: reclaiming territory, rebuilding communities, and transforming what was once a source of criminal power into public value.

Italy has just enacted into law an initiative born more than a decade ago that seeks to protect children, adolescents, young people, and women who choose to break away from family environments linked to organized crime.

From the fields of Sicily, the social reuse of confiscated goods became one of the most innovative policies. Today it celebrates its 30th anniversary.

Lea Garofalo was one of the first women who tirelessly sought to break away from the fate that her family and her town had laid out for her. The deaths and the birth of her daughter would change her life forever and give her a new purpose: to save herself in order to save her daughter. Here is part of her story.

The story of Rossella Casini is a story of women—of many women: her own story, that of her mother, her friends, and her university classmates; also that of her sister-in-law and of those who decided her fate. Here is part of her story.