2023 saw Italy register the lowest homicide rate in the EU, and the 3rd lowest age-standardized homicide rate.
These milestones in the dual quest of combatting organized crime and improving internal security mark an incredible turnaround from the height of recent mafia-related violence experienced by the country between the 1980s and 1990s.
Around the world and certainly in Europe, young men are much more likely to be both the victim and the perpetrator of a homicide. Italy, with the largest population of senior citizens in the EU, had the lowest intentional homicide rate—0.57 per 100,000 inhabitants, against a European average of 0.91 in 2023, according to national data sources.
A responsible way to measure the homicide rate in such circumstances would be to adjust it to reflect the smaller proportion of younger men in the population, but even this method produces a homicide rate of 0.4 deaths per 100,000, compared with an EU average of almost 0.7.
It places Italy behind only Malta and Germany in this metric, and cements the country as one of the least ultra-violent in the union.
The data was presented in a report by Eurispes, a private institution providing political, economic, and social research in Italy, based on statistics collected by the national bureau, called Istat.
“The country, which in 1991 experienced one of the most dramatic moments in its recent history in terms of mafia and criminal violence, is today firmly placed in the most favorable part of the European homicide mortality rankings,” the authors of the Eurispes report write in their conclusion.
For those who relate the mafia only to stories of Al Capone, Whitey Bulger, or the Gambino family in New York City, the Eurispes report includes a brief retrospective of the impacts of these organizations in the land of their birth.
Between 1985 and 1991, homicides rose in Italy by 992, of which 522—a little more than half—had been crimes committed by Cosa Nostra, the Camorra, and the ’Ndrangheta, the criminal organizations active in Sicily, Campania, and Calabria respectively.
In 1991, Italy recorded 1,916 homicides, equal to 3.4 per 100,000 inhabitants. Eurispes reports that over a third of these were attributable to mafia-type organizations.
However, between 1985 and 2024, that number fell by 80%, largely because of the state’s multifaceted response to the mafioso violence, inter-mafia conflicts diminishing, and a greater and greater reluctance by these criminal groups to resort to extreme violence given the inevitable reaction from the government.
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Italy is still a large and densely populated country, and hundreds of homicides are committed every year. One of the most dramatic statistics that demonstrates the success of this overall fall in violent crime is the loss of continuity between the industrialized and richer north, and the poorer, agricultural south.
Indeed the 2 highest homicide rates are found in the rural southern region of Sardinia, and the mountainous, ski-loving Aosta Valley on the border with France. When Sardinia is excluded, the homicide rates in the south, center, and the north of Italy almost equalize.
Lastly, other measures of homicide have shown that this decline in mafia-related violence isn’t the only driving force. Though witnessing a more modest decrease over the same period of time, “femicide” has also fallen to among the lowest in the EU.
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In 2022, with 0.42 women killed per 100,000, Italy was very close to the lowest value among EU countries with available data: which was 0.39 per 100,000 recorded in Ireland.
Italy can suffer at times from a reputation of being slightly backward with regard to the rest of Europe, and though other forms of unsocial conduct such as car theft and burglary are higher than many other European countries, there is a reluctance to resort to violence across the population regardless of age, sex, and regional background, that is very avant-garde indeed.
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