"Free to Choose": When the Mafia No Longer Decides the Future

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.

Free to Choose

On July 17, 2026, Italy enacted Law No. 131, known as Liberi di scegliere ("Free to Choose"), establishing protection and support measures for minors and the adult caregivers who decide to leave environments shaped by organized crime. Yet reducing Liberi di scegliere to a protection program would overlook the law's true significance.

Some laws are designed to strike at the economic power of the mafias; others make it possible to imprison their members, confiscate their assets, or prevent them from controlling businesses and public institutions. But there are also laws that seek to intervene in far more difficult terrain: family ties, emotional bonds, and the power relationships through which criminal organizations reproduce themselves across generations.

This is where the importance of Liberi di scegliere lies. Its strength is its ability to intervene in the family sphere, in blood ties, and in the power dynamics that allow the mafias to preserve their codes, values, and influence from one generation to the next. The law introduces an idea that appears simple but is potentially revolutionary for mafia culture: being born into a mafia family does not mean being condemned to belong to it.

Being the son or daughter of a mafioso does not oblige someone to follow the same path, and being the wife of a member of a criminal organization does not mean having to accept forever the rules imposed upon her. In this way, Liberi di scegliere challenges a family order built on obedience and deeply unequal power relations, where male authority shapes the lives of women and determines the future of their children.

For the mafias, this is no minor matter.

A Story That Began Before the Law

Liberi di scegliere did not originate in Parliament. Like many of Italy's most innovative anti-mafia policies, it emerged from practical experience and from the need to address problems for which existing legislation offered no adequate response.

One of its principal architects was Roberto Di Bella, a magistrate who served for many years as President of the Juvenile Court of Reggio Calabria. Over the years, he watched successive generations of the same families pass through his courtroom. Many of the young people who had appeared before him as juvenile offenders returned years later as parents of children and teenagers beginning to follow the same path.

Behind each case file lay strikingly similar stories. Children were growing up surrounded by relatives involved in organized crime, learning from an early age cultural codes rooted in silence, obedience, the defense of family honor, revenge, and unquestioning loyalty to the clan.

Calabria is the birthplace of the 'Ndrangheta, a mafia organization that has expanded far beyond its region of origin to become one of the world's most influential actors in international drug trafficking. One of its defining characteristics has always been the central role of family ties. Blood relations, marriages, and alliances between families reinforce trust and internal cohesion, ensuring the organization's continuity across generations.

Observing the effects of this system on children and adolescents led Di Bella to ask a different question: Did the State have to wait until these children committed a crime before intervening, or could it offer them an alternative beforehand?

Beginning in 2012, the Juvenile Court of Reggio Calabria developed an initiative designed to answer that question. Whenever remaining within the family environment posed a serious risk to a child's development, the court could adopt measures to remove the child temporarily from that setting and provide the opportunity to live, study, and grow up in a different environment. Di Bella relied on the child-protection mechanisms already available under Italian juvenile law, interpreting them through a preventive approach aimed at shielding minors from the influence of organized crime.

Removing a child or adolescent from a mafia family, however, was far from straightforward. A judicial order could separate a young person physically from that environment, but it was far more difficult to break the emotional, familial, and cultural bonds that continued to tie them to that world and to create the conditions for a lasting separation.

The real turning point came when some mothers took a step that had previously seemed unimaginable. They themselves asked for help to leave the mafia environment and begin a new life with their children. They had come to realize that the same rules that had shaped and constrained their own lives were also determining the future of their sons and daughters. In order to protect them, they chose to break away from that world, accepting the immense personal risk of leaving behind the network of family, economic, and emotional relationships that had defined their existence.

At that point, the initiative was no longer simply about removing children from dangerous environments. In many cases, it was the mothers themselves who chose to leave with their children and sought a genuine opportunity to rebuild their lives. Around these decisions, a broad network gradually took shape, bringing together magistrates, social services, civil society organizations, residential care communities, and sectors of the Catholic Church.

What had begun as a judicial response progressively evolved into a comprehensive system of protection and support. Many years later, that experience was finally recognized and enshrined in national legislation.

Women and the Breakdown of the Mafia Order

The decisions made by these women reveal an aspect of the mafias that for a long time remained in the background. Traditional mafia organizations were not built solely around criminal activities or networks of economic and political power. They also developed within a deeply patriarchal culture, in which the family itself became one of the principal spaces for establishing hierarchies, defining behavior, and assigning rigid roles to men and women.

This does not mean that women have always occupied passive positions. Judicial investigations have documented numerous cases in which women managed financial resources, transmitted orders, maintained communications with imprisoned clan members, or even assumed direct criminal responsibilities. Acknowledging this role, however, does not diminish the patriarchal nature of the relationships upon which mafia power has historically been built. An organization may grant a woman authority while simultaneously denying her freedom.

Within this system, individual autonomy is subordinated to the interests of the family, and a woman's identity may be defined for much of her life by her relationship to the men around her—as a daughter, sister, wife, or mother. Emotional relationships, sexuality, motherhood, and decisions concerning children are all subject to rules designed to preserve the cohesion, reputation, and interests of the clan.

Male authority within the family therefore takes on a significance that extends far beyond private life. When the authority of a father or husband is reinforced by the power of a criminal organization, disobedience means confronting not merely one man, but an entire system of relationships, loyalties, and threats.

This is precisely why the decision of some mothers to leave with their children carries such profound significance. It is not simply an individual search for safety. By rejecting the rules imposed upon them, these women challenge male authority, the principle of unquestioning obedience, and the notion that the mafia family has the right to determine the future of its members. Leaving a mafia family is not merely a break with a criminal organization; it is a challenge to a social, familial, and cultural order deliberately designed to prevent that very possibility.

Libera has been one of the leading advocates of this initiative and later played a central role in promoting the adoption of the Liberi di scegliere law. Following its approval, its president, Don Luigi Ciotti, observed that it was these women who first opened a breach within the criminal system, demonstrating that the desire for freedom can be stronger than the voice of a master—even when that voice is intertwined with love, family ties, and bonds of blood.

It is within that breach that one of the most innovative dimensions of Liberi di scegliere can be found. A woman who leaves a mafia environment together with her children is not merely seeking to transform her own life. She is breaking a chain of transmission that may have endured for generations and reclaiming for her children the right to build a different future.

When Protection Becomes a Right

The enactment of Law No. 131 marks a fundamental turning point. An initiative developed over many years through judicial decisions, institutional protocols, and support networks has now become a national public policy. The possibility of leaving a mafia environment and receiving protection no longer depends solely on the capacity of those handling individual cases. Instead, it is now supported by a legal framework designed to guarantee rights and assistance throughout Italy.

The law is primarily intended for minors living in environments shaped by organized crime and exposed to circumstances that threaten their development and freedom. It also applies to young people who have participated in criminal activities but express a genuine willingness to leave those environments behind. Under certain conditions, the protection measures may be extended until the age of twenty-five.

One of the law's most significant features is that these measures may also be extended to mothers and other primary caregivers who choose to break away from the criminal environment together with the minors. Protection no longer necessarily means separating children from their families. Instead, it may mean giving a mother and her children the opportunity to leave together and begin a new life.

Leaving, however, is only the beginning. Anyone who abandons a mafia family must leave behind their home, their loved ones, their social relationships, and often their source of income. For this reason, the law provides psychological, educational, social, and financial assistance, as well as measures to ensure educational continuity, vocational training, and the gradual achievement of economic independence.

Starting over also means disappearing from the places and networks where a person can be located. The law provides for relocation to secure locations and, among its most sensitive provisions, allows the use of cover identity documents and, in certain circumstances, the official change of a person's identity. Everyday activities such as enrolling a child in school, visiting a hospital, renting a home, or completing an administrative procedure can become sources of serious risk for someone trying to remain beyond the reach of a criminal environment.

The story of Lea Garofalo, murdered in 2009 in retaliation for breaking away from her mafia environment and choosing to build a different life with her daughter, serves as a powerful reminder of the dangers that such a decision can entail. Leaving, therefore, is not enough. Afterwards comes the far more difficult task of rebuilding relationships, achieving economic independence, and recovering a sense of normality that for many years may seem out of reach.

Protection cannot be limited to hiding a person from danger; it must create the conditions that allow them to truly live again.

A New Frontier in the Fight Against the Mafias

Over the decades, Italy's anti-mafia experience has progressively expanded the scope of intervention against organized crime. The criminal prosecution of mafia members was followed by measures aimed at targeting illicitly accumulated wealth and, later, by the social reuse of assets confiscated from criminal organizations.

The social reuse of confiscated assets marked a profound cultural shift. A house, a business, or a piece of land that once symbolized the power of a criminal organization can be transformed into a place of work, education, and civic participation. The objective is not merely to deprive the mafias of economic resources, but also to weaken their ability to build prestige, secure public consent, and exercise control over local communities.

Liberi di scegliere can be understood as the next step in this evolution. This time, the intervention is directed not at assets or businesses, but at a deeper dimension of mafia power: its ability to reproduce its codes, loyalties, and systems of authority within families and to pass them from one generation to the next.

Human beings, of course, cannot be compared to property confiscated from a criminal organization. Yet there is an important point of connection between these two experiences. Just as the social reuse of confiscated assets affirmed that territories and wealth accumulated by the mafias could be restored to the community, Liberi di scegliere affirms that no criminal organization can claim ownership over the future of those born within its sphere of influence.

From this perspective, protecting a woman who chooses to leave a mafia environment or enabling a child to grow up beyond the reach of those inherited codes is not merely a social policy. It is also a form of organized crime prevention. At the same time, the passage of a law does not, by itself, guarantee that such choices can be sustained over time. For Liberi di scegliere to fulfill its promise, adequate resources, institutions capable of implementing the law, and a society willing to support decisions that often entail enormous personal sacrifice will all be essential.

What the law does accomplish is something fundamental: it transforms a possibility forged over many years through individual experiences into a right formally recognized by the State. Perhaps this is the true power of its name. Liberi di scegliere does not seek to decide on behalf of those born and raised within mafia families, nor does it attempt to erase the bonds, affections, and histories that inevitably shape their lives. It simply affirms that those histories should not determine their future.

It is here that the right to choose acquires its full meaning. Faced with a system of power that for generations has sought to turn blood ties into belonging, and belonging into destiny, choosing becomes an act of liberation. It breaks a chain that once seemed inescapable and affirms that no family, no surname, and no criminal organization has the right to deprive any person of the freedom to build their own future.