Inside the Criminology of Carlo Morselli

Abstract:Carlo Morselli's research inspired numerous scholars around the world to integrate criminal achievement indicators and social network data into their research programs. As a professor of criminology for over 20 years at the Université de Montréal, Morselli was part of a generation of scholars who acted as brokers between Canada's two official languages. This volume of the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice brings together research inspired by his legacy. Morselli's interests were diverse; we selected manuscripts revolving around two major themes in his career: the development of criminal achievement as a conceptual and empirical framework, and the innovative use of social network data in new contexts of criminological interest, such as the role of social networks in individuals' relative optimism towards desistance, or in future victimization.Résumé:Les recherches du professeur Carlo Morselli ont amené de nombreux chercheurs à travers le monde à tenir compte de la réussite criminelle et des réseaux sociaux dans leurs propres travaux. Dans son rôle de professeur en criminologie à l'université de Montréal, Morselli a agi en tant que courtier entre les deux langues officielles canadiennes. Ce numéro de la Revue canadienne de criminologie et de justice pénale rassemble des recherches empiriques inspirées par son travail. Les intérêts de Morselli étaient variés; Les articles présentés portent sur deux grands thèmes ayant marqué sa carrière : le développement du cadre conceptuel et empirique entourant la réussite criminelle, et l'utilisation dans de nouveaux contextes d'intérêt en criminologie de données issues des réseaux sociaux pour mieux comprendre certains enjeux, notamment le rôle que peut jouer les réseaux dans le processus de désistement ou de victimisation.

Mots clés: réseaux criminels, crime organisé, réussite criminelle, analyse des réseaux sociaux, Carlo Morselli Th e passing of Dr. Carlo Morselli in October 2020 was many decades too soon, hitting all of us who knew him or his work very hard. Carlo had been battling cancer for a few years, beating the initial prognostics he received when the cancer was discovered. A few months aft er his diagnosis, Carlo started to take a deep interest in experimental cancer treatments that used neural network analysis to target the "broker cells" responsible for spreading cancer. We do not know exactly how far his quest went, but we know he was hoping to establish collaborative ties with cancer researchers so that each subfi eld of network scholarship could learn from the discoveries made in the other -a collaborative, innovative network scholar through and through until the very end.
Carlo obtained his Ph.D. from the School of Criminology at the Université de Montréal in 2001, where he was soon hired as a member of the faculty. In this position, he played a crucial role in the development of Canadian criminology for over 20 years, including in his role as a former director and researcher at the International Centre for Comparative Criminology and a long-time editorial board member of the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice. A s one of our mentors, Carlo was there to make things light when we needed it most. Taking things too seriously? Taking yourself too seriously? He would listen, he would shake his head, tilt it to the side, and start smiling … and it was all we needed. Carlo encouraged all of us to fi nd our own academic identities -to stay true to who we were. His mentorship was not dogmatic; it was personalized. It encouraged reading broadly, it encouraged creativity, it encouraged us to fi nd purpose. To make our writing clearer and more alive, for instance, he oft en told us to write with someone in mind, someone who needed to be convinced, someone who would disagree: Don't write with your friends in mind, they already agree. Write with an enemy in mind, someone who would challenge your ideas .
His own scholarship was creative, innovative, and inspiring. His love for biographies of criminals and case studies infused a proper dose of life and soul into his articles. He was Source: Christian Fleur proud that mainstream criminologists had paid attention to his work. But he was most proud of his students, current or past. He kept in touch with everyone -everyone! Th ere was always time, with Carlo. He always took the time.
Carlo was, of course, an international criminology superstar. He was not the very fi rst criminologist to use social network analysis, but he was the one who brought it to the masses. He made it understandable, relevant. Why do some people get ahead in crime? Because they manage their social networks better than others. Because they were mentored early in their career. It was about time we paid serious attention to this.
And no w a lot of us are simply applying the Carlo principles in our own research. We are pursuing, in our own way, a little piece of the criminology of Carlo Morselli. With the help of Rémi Boivin and David Décary-Hétu, who are preparing a similarly themed special volume in Global Crime, w e decided to do our part to honor his legacy by editing this volume of the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice. A sin gle issue of either journal would not have been able to do justice to the richness and diversity of research projects that Carlo has spearheaded over the course of his career. Th is is why readers are encouraged to consider the two volumes as complementary, companion volumes. 1 We also encourage readers interested in a review of Carlo's work to consult von Lampe's (2021 ) recent article Remembering Carlo Morselli .
On t he CJCCJ side , we selected manuscripts revolving around two major themes in Carlo's career: the development of criminal achievement as a conceptual and empirical framework (Nur and Nguyen; Tremblay, Morselli, and Charest), and the innovative use of social network data in new contexts of criminological interest (Carrington and Graham; Nolet, Mignon, and Charette; Ryu and McCuish). On the Global Crime side, you will fi nd other themes from Carlo's research, from patterns in organized crime or co-off ending networks to developments in using network data to think through disruption. Th e division of papers is of course not clear-cut, nor should it be if it is to capture the variety of infl uences found in any of Carlo's work.

Patterns in criminal achievement
In 2000, Pierre Tremblay and Carlo published their fi rst of a series of papers on criminal achievement. Pierre and Carlo were struck by Wilson and Abrahamse's claims that off enders were prone to exaggerate or even lie about their criminal earnings (to rationalize their otherwise poor criminal output), to the point where none of these data could be trusted for empirical research. Tremblay and Morselli (2000 ) re-analyzed the same data, and instead found surprisingly reliable data on earnings. One of the main takeaways was not that most career criminals make large sums of money from crime, but there were enough examples of criminal success around to inspire a much larger segment of the less successful criminal populations. Success via criminal involvement was possible and attainable, and most had enough examples from their own career and those of their social networks to believe that it was within reach.
T wo papers from this volume continue this line of inquiry. In "Anomie Reconsidered: Exaggerated Aspirations, Risk-Taking and Criminal Achievement, " Tremblay, Morselli, and Charest get inside the logic of off ender decision-making as few have done before by directly tackling the role of individual aspirations in criminal risk-taking. Th eir inquiry starts with an important yet rarely asked question to individuals involved in crime: How much legitimate money would it take for you to leave your criminal career? Individuals who want more compensation to leave crime either have large criminal earnings, have little confi dence in their ability to earn in conventional settings, or are simply expressing their strong preference for a criminal lifestyle regardless of what they earn. What if we could actually measure the discrepancy between what legitimate earnings off enders consider as adequate compensation for desisting from crime entirely, and the actual legitimate earnings they reported? Th e larger the diff erence between what they want and what they have, the more off enders are said to be in a state of anomie. And it is this state of anomie, of potential dissatisfaction between the want a nd the have , that Tremblay and co-authors hypothesize as a driver of risk-taking preferences among criminals. Th eir results are clear: Exaggerated aspirations are strong positive predictors of risk-taking in their sample. Th eir measurement of risk-taking is worth the read, in and of itself. Inspired by the payoff matrix for jurors of consequences of making the right or wrong decision to convict or acquit accused off enders, the authors extract a measure of acceptable risks that off enders are willing to take by calculating the individual contributions of criminal hits made (the "right" decision to have committed a crime), the missed criminal opportunities (money they could have made from crime), the failures of action (missed earnings from incarceration), and the potential legitimate earnings to be made if they desisted from crime entirely.
In "Getting By: Low Wages and Income Supplementation, " Nur and Nguyen continue the analysis of criminal earnings but focus on the relative balance that individuals achieve between the various sources of income (legal, informal, illegal). Th is question is oft en discussed within the framework of the rational choice perspective but rarely tackled head-on. Based on longitudinal data from a sample of adolescents who have begun the transition to adulthood, this study is interested in the decision to supplement legal income with income from informal or illegal activities and how human capital, conventional social capital, and criminal social capital are associated with these decisions. Th e results show that the sources of income of these adolescents are varied, and the probability of supplementing legal work with illicit income-generating activities is infl uenced by criminal social capital and low legal wages. Diff erential mechanisms associated with decisions to supplement licit work inform the context that can lead to crimes and contribute to the planning of strategies promoting reintegration success.

Innovative uses of social network data in new contexts of criminological interest
Carlo was of course at the forefront of research on social networks and crime. Much of his research revolved around the idea that the structure of individual social networks had an impact on criminal careers. His very fi rst articles, for instance, showed how the network structure of a drug traffi cker helped him stay in business for 30 years ( Morselli 2001 ), and how it was the social network of a Mafi oso -not his reputation for violence -that allowed him to move through the ranks of an Italian crime family ( Morselli 2003 ). As his career progressed, Carlo explored the range of network eff ects on other aspects of criminal careers, from criminal earnings ( Morselli and Tremblay 2004 ) to detection avoidance inside criminal organizations ( Morselli 2010 ).
T wo of the articles in this volume speak to this aspect of his research agenda. Th e fi rst, "Exploring the Reciprocal Relationship between Serious Victimization and Criminogenic Networks, " by Ryu and McCuish, aims to understand whether serious victimization is associated with future social network characteristics. Th eir analysis is based on longitudinal data of a sample of adjudicated young off enders. Findings show that experiences of serious victimization were associated with a person's future network characteristics. Th is study is innovative in that it emphasizes the relationship between social environment and victimization at the individual level. Previous studies have compartmentalized the explanation of victimizations within criminal careers by focusing primarily on criminal involvement or lifestyle characteristics.
Th e second article, "Th e Eff ect of the Structure of Prosocial and Antisocial Relationships Structure on Off enders' Optimism towards Desistance, " by Nolet, Charette, and Mignon, presents a mixed-method approach to understanding how an incarcerated person's sociability features are intertwined with their potential for re-entry, more specifi cally in their perception of their potential for desistance. Th e focus is on personal networks beyond the carceral setting, a dimension that is generally neglected in studies of re-entry. Th e authors distinguish between prosocial and antisocial ties, as well as between open and closed networks, showing that relative optimism towards desistance depends on specifi c combinations of ties that favor individuals who have access to dense, prosocial connections.
Carlo was also interested in more meso-, even macro-level eff ects of networks. He was a leading fi gure in promoting the utility of social network analysis for examining how social structure shapes criminal activity ( Morselli 2009 ). Certain criminal opportunities emerge from fl uid and adaptive structures that promotes cooperation between off enders (e.g., Morselli and Royer 2008 ;Ouellet et al. 2013 ). Th e research note, "Th e Interurban Network of Criminal Collaboration in Canada, " by Carrington and Graham, is part of this tradition in focusing on the structure of criminal collaboration at the national level. Th e approach is innovative insofar as the unit of analysis is cities. Th e links that unite Canadian cities are based on off enders who engage in collaborative crime in more than one city, an innovative take on off ender mobility that Carlo would have appreciated.

Conclusion
Th e broad spectrum of study objects represented in this issue bear witness to Carlo's remarkable versatility and the scope, implication, and applicability of his research work. Th e articles chosen in this special issue can only capture a small portion of the legacy left by Carlo. Th e criminology of Carlo Morselli was unique; the man himself was one of a kind. No small collection of papers can quite do justice to the intellectual loss we all suff ered. But we hope this issue sparks new ideas for the current and next generation of criminologists to pursue the work he started.