Sanne de Boer

A lot of the membership, well, the membership in principle is passed on from father to son.

So it's all these men in families.

Then you can, there are arranged marriages between women in the clans with other clans that they might want to collaborate with, or they might have to sort of have a peace offering with after a feud.

So it's a very family based, which helps them, of course, to keep,

all the criminal information safe and sound within the family walls.

For loyalty.

They're very important.

And this is also the reason why for a long time there were hardly any state witnesses who were former members and turned to speak to the police because there is an actual rule in the Dangda that tells people if they do such a thing, they will be killed by their nearest family members.

Oh, that's right.

By their father or their brother.

It's such a suffocating cruelty.

These rules are so extremely cruel and extremely binding in that sense that it's quite understandable for somebody to be born in such a family.

to almost feel that there's no way out.

I hope that the message of the book, definitely not to stigmatize Calabrian people, definitely not to also believe that all we have to do is now put all these criminals behind bars, because that's already happening.

most part in Italy, and it's not resolving the problem.

I mean, there's less people being killed in Italy.

There's a lot of people in jail.

But when they come out, they just go back again because that's what is expected of them.

So really what we need to do is to, and I think I will focus more about that in my newer work, is trying to find a more of a holistic approach to resolving these issues.