In 2024, crimes in Italy will exceed pre-Covid levels: 2.38 million reports, 6,500 per day. 60% of those arrested for petty crime are foreigners
Other than “perception of insecurity”. The data speaks clearly and there is a boom in crimes. Especially petty street crime. And among the perpetrators, the primacy is held by foreigners, especially in the case of thefts, muggings and robberies where 6 out of 10 arrested are immigrants. Although there are still those who prefer to put their heads under the carpet and talk about pure propaganda, the joint database of the Public Security department of the Ministry of the Interior photographs a reality that is certainly well known in the news and which sees 2024 confirmed as the second year in a row in which pre-Covid crime levels are exceeded.
With a total of 2.38 million crimes, even 6,500 per day, last year recorded 40,000 more cases than in 2023 and 80,000 more than before the pandemic. As for the perpetrators, the record goes to foreigners who, between regular and irregular, represent 34.7% of those reported. A percentage which in the case of predatory crimes jumps to 60%, and reaches 69% if we are talking about skillful thefts. A merciless photograph also because it is based on the number of complaints, one of the most reliable data if one wants to understand the impact of immigration on security in Italy, starting from that of foreigners, who between regular and irregular currently represent 10% of the entire population.
One of the most popular ploys by the “deniers” of the correlation between foreigners and crimes is to resort to the number of prisoners, generally stable at around 32%. In reality, if read carefully, these same data are anything but comforting and represent a boomerang because it means that foreigners commit crimes at least 3.2 times more than Italians. Not only that, the data on prisoners are not good indicators because foreigners, often in disadvantaged economic conditions and without a containment network, have fewer possibilities of accessing alternative measures to prison and can end up behind bars more easily than Italians.
However, the data on complaints, precisely those released by the Interior Ministry, are much more reliable, because in this case the weight of environmental conditions is almost minimal and the data is “cleaner”. So clean as to be unsettling.
If six out of ten arrested are foreigners, if mathematics is not an opinion, it means that they commit crimes at least 6 times more than Italians. However, these numbers change based on the crime. In the case of robberies, foreigners represent 52.3% of the perpetrators but the percentage rises to 60.1% for robberies in public streets and to 69% in the case of skillful thefts, which means that in this case foreigners commit up to 7 times more than Italians. Percentages that drop slightly, without however giving up the lead, in the case of sexual violence and drug dealing where, respectively, there are 43% and 39% of the perpetrators.
If the scenario is worrying, it could be even more so if we were to analyze the rate of crimes committed by illegal immigrants, currently estimated at around 321,000 units according to the latest ISMU ETS report. In this case, according to data previously released by the Ministry of the Interior, the average dangerousness can rise up to 50 times more than that of Italians for the same crimes.
Now, why foreigners generally commit more crimes than Italians is due to a series of factors known to sociologists. Already Marzio Barbagliamong the main scholars of the phenomenon, has repeatedly highlighted how the majority of the perpetrators of these crimes live in disadvantaged and economically marginalized conditions, a situation that generates frustration, aggression and resentment towards the host society, especially for second generations of immigrants.
It is no coincidence that among the perpetrators of crimes, there is also a worrying boom in the number of minors. The data is not separated by parents’ nationality but between 2020 and 2024, the number of under 18s reported, stopped and/or arrested increased by 30%. And from 29,544 in 2019 it rose to 38,247 reports. Here too, mainly crimes against property with one report in five for robbery, which becomes one in four if “in public”.
At a territorial level on the podium we find Milan, Rome and Florence. 23.5% of the crimes detected are concentrated in these three cities. In particular, one in five in Rome and Milan, which exceeds the capital with almost 7,000 complaints per 100,000 inhabitants.
Among the cities where foreigners have a greater weight on the total arrests we find Milan, 55.8%, and Florence, 56%, where especially in recent years street crimes such as thefts and robberies have multiplied. But border territories such as Imperia (54.8%) and Gorizia also find a place among the records.
A special mention, however, goes to Prato where the arrests of foreigners are as high as 62%, almost double the national average, given that one cannot help but also read in relation to the very high percentage of foreign residents in the territory, around 25%. Not by chance.
