Crime in Italy

Crime in Italy is present in various forms throughout the nation. Italy is notorious for its organized crime groups, which are present worldwide and collectively referred to as the Mafia. Resultantly, financial crimes like corruption, extortion, and theft are the most common type of illicit activity in the country. Violent crimes are very rare in Italy evidenced by its homicide rate of 0.51 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2021, which is the lowest in Europe aside from micro states like Vatican City and San Marino, and one of the lowest in the world.

Description Overview Italy is ranked 18th in the World Internal Security & Police Index with an index of 0.770 in 2023. In 2020, Italy had 398 law enforcement personnel per 100,000 inhabitants. Regionally, the southern regions of Italy has a high prevalence of intentional homicides, extortions, criminal conspiracies and robberies while the central-northern region of Italy has theft, rape, and exploitation of prostitution.

In 2015, the northern region of Emilia Romagna had the highest crime rate in Italy per 100,000 people.

Crime by type

Homicide and Assault In the 1990s, homicide reached a peak of 5.49 per 100,000 people in 1991 and averaged at around 3 per 100,000 people. Afterwards, the homicide rates dropped drastically to 0.48 per 100,000 people, before rising to 0.57 in 2023.

Violence against women

Organized crime

Many worldwide crime organizations originated in Italy, and their influence is widespread in Italian society, directly affecting a reported 22% of citizens and 14.6% of Italy's Gross Domestic Product. Public figures such as former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi have been investigated for their association in organized criminal acts.

There are several separate criminal organizations controlling territory and business activities: Sicilian Cosa Nostra, Campanian Camorra, Calabrese 'Ndrangheta, and Apulian Sacra Corona Unita. More than 13 million people are involved into crime web. Their business involvement is on a European and global scale. Particularly in Naples an unusual high homicide rate and several drug addicted people have qualified the town as the most dangerous in Western Europe.

Businesses, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, and craftsmen in these regions are expected to pay protection money. There is rarely any possibility of escaping payment, and those not complying find their business premises and lives at risk. People not able to meet demands might find their business partly or completely taken over by organized crime.

In 2009, organized crime in Italy generated $189 billion in revenue.

In 2020, there were only 28 murders related to the mafia, compared to an average of 527 murders between 1988 and 1992.

Sexual Violence Italy has a lower per capita rate of rape than most of the advanced Western countries in the European Union.

According to Police authorities data, the rate of sexual assaults per 100,000 inhabitants is significantly higher in the Northern region than in the Southern ones. In 2009, Lombardia and Emilia Romagna were the regions with the highest rate of sexual offences per 100.000 inhabitants (9.7); followed by Trentino Alto Adige and Tuscany (9.5); Piedmont and Liguria (8.6); Umbria (8.4). In this respect, all major Southern regions like Sicily (6.8); Calabria (6.5); Apulia (6.2); Campania (6,0) were the safest in the national territory, with the only exception of Friuli Venezia Giulia (5.1) in the North.Marzio Barbagli & Asher Colombo (2010) Rapporto sulla criminalità e sicurezza in Italia 2010 Sintesi, pag. 6. Ministero dell'Interno (accessed on 14 July 2012)

Financial Crime and Corruption

Fraud is a major contributor to Italy's crime rate, with some level of fraud appearing in all sectors of the economy since the country's founding in 1861. Notable cases of financial fraud include the collapse of Parmalat in the early years of the 21st century, and the Lockheed bribery scandal in the 1970s.

Insurance fraud also dramatically increases the cost of insurance in Italy, with 115,646 incidents of fraudulent claims in 2001 alone, with 3.28 percent of all claims in 2002 ascertained to have involved fraud. The percentage rose above ten percent in some of the southern provinces.

State employees have been perceived to have such a high rate of absenteeism, often feigning illness, that in 2008 the government introduced a law to harshly prosecute civil servants who are found to be making fraudulent claims about their health. Fraudulent claims of ill health are not confined to state employees, with some physicians often willing to receive bribes to certify non-existent conditions so that citizens may receive disability benefits. A case was revealed in 2010 where in one quartiere of Naples alone, 400 people were found to be claiming mental illness although healthy.

Corruption also remains a major problem in Italy, particularly in Southern Italy including Calabria, parts of Campania and Sicily where corruption perception is at a high level. Political parties are ranked as the most corrupt institution in Italy, closely followed by public officials and Parliament, according to Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer 2013.

Drug-Related Crimes Italy is considered one of the drug portals to Europe thanks to its geolocation and omnipresence of organised crime groups. Substantial amounts of illegal drugs are smuggled through the country with the goal of reaching other European nations. These narcotics are exported from drug producing regions principally via maritime route but also via air and land. Areas such as South America, specifically Colombia produce and supply cocaine, Southeast Asia and Afghanistan principally supply heroin, whereas north-western and south-eastern Europe, Morocco and Albania cultivate and deliver cannabis. The drugs are bought and distributed both in Italy and in the rest of Europe by organised crime groups.

Italians are not solely transporters and smugglers of narcotics, they are also consumers. While using is not a crime itself, possession for personal use is.

The general population survey on drugs conducted in 2017 deduced that Italians within the ages of 15 and 64, in the course of their life, had, at least once, made use of psychoactive substances, with 1 in 10 using in the past year. Cannabis is the most used drug within the population, with an estimated 1.1 % using it daily, whereas, 20.9% of young adults have used in the last year.

Use of cocaine and other psychoactive drugs is reported to be lower within the peninsula, where it has been recorded that 1.7% of young adults have used cocaine in the past year. Moreover, Italy is considered one of the EU countries with the highest number of high risk opioid use, with high use of off label drugs.

The number of drug law offenders in 2019 was 73 804. In 2017, over 35,000 people were convicted by the police for drug related crimes, this number decreased in October 2018 to about 23,600 people. Furthermore, in 2015, a third of the aggregate of convicts was in prison due to drug related crimes. In fact, Italy held the record amongst the 47 member states of the European Council for drug related convictions.

Crime by region

Southern Italy Southern Italy contains lower overall crime rates in comparison to Northern Italy. However, Mafia-related corruption and extortion are widely prevalent in Campania, Sicily, Calabria, and nearby areas. Such crimes also extend into certain northern urban areas, but Naples and some provinces of Calabria, Apulia and Sardinia have a higher murder rate than northern cities.

Sicily Crime in Sicily has consistently been dominated by the Cosa Nostra mafia group throughout history. As such, Sicilian criminality has been highly glamorized in the American film industry. However, it is highly unlikely that civilians or tourists will run into any trouble with the Mafia. Violent crime is very low; at 0.34 per 100,000 inhabitants as of 2019, the homicide rate in Sicily is among the lowest in both Italy and the world.Eurostat, 2019 However, petty crimes such as fraud and pickpocketing are not as uncommon in Sicily. Furthermore, extortion is endemic, as an estimated 80% of Sicilian businesses pay a pizzo to the Mafia. Resultantly, more than 160 million euros are extorted yearly from businesses in Palermo, and investigators estimate that Sicily as a whole pays 10 times that figure.

Central and Northern Italy In comparison with southern Italy, the central and northern regions of the country are generally perceived as less prone to crime by foreigners. However, in recent years, the north has tended to exhibit slightly higher levels of crime than the south, evidenced by the northern cities of Milan, Florence, Turin, Genoa, and Rimini scoring the highest crime rates in Italy. On the other hand, regions such as Marche, Tuscany, Umbria, and Friuli Venezia Giulia show relatively lower indicators of criminality. Despite this, the northern regions of Italy have consistently demonstrated lower levels of extortion and corruption than their southern counterparts.

Rome According to the European Union’s statistics-gathering wing, there were 0.7 homicides per 100,000 people in Rome as of 2015. This puts the homicide rate in the capital at a slightly higher rate than the national average of 0.5, but this is still by all accounts a very low homicide rate, especially for a large city, and amongst the lowest in European capital cities. As with the rest of Italy, pickpocketing, petty fraud, and automobile theft are much more common than violent crimes.

Imprisonment As of 30 April 2026 the 189 penal institutions in Italy held 64,412 inmates, of whom 2,844 were women and 20,307 were foreign nationals, against an official capacity of 51,265 places, according to the Department of Penitentiary Administration of the Ministry of Justice. The department calculates capacity on the basis of 9 square metres for the first inmate plus 5 square metres for each of the others, a more generous standard than the 6 plus 4 square metres used by the Committee for the Prevention of Torture.

In the Council of Europe's SPACE I penal statistics for 2025, published on 19 May 2026, Italy recorded 121 inmates per 100 available places, against 95.2 for Europe as a whole, and was one of nine prison administrations classified as severely overcrowded, alongside Türkiye and France (both 131), Croatia (123), Malta (118) and Cyprus (117).

Crime in Italy

Bron en licentie