Community Policing in Europe
An overview of practices, approaches and innovations in:

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Italy
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The following summary is intended only as convenient highlights to introduce readers to the Community Policing environment and current best practices in Italy. Lengthier and more technical studies are available from the authors through the email link provided below.

Italian police forces first adopted Community Policing just over ten years ago, and patterned their community liaison officers after the French model. As there was no central direction or legislative guidance for the new approach, Community Policing took many forms -with varying success-throughout the country.

As a result, until recently Italian police lagged behind most of Europe in adopting and developing Community Policing programs. The chief difficulty was in making the transition from "situational response" policing, i.e., responding to emergency calls alone, to one of proactive crime prevention, intervention, and community engagement.

Several years ago, regional offices of the Polizia di Stato (National Police), supported by the major police labor unions, began campaigning for a basic redirection of Italian policing methods and approaches. Within a year, they succeeded in mobilizing public support for the introduction, nationwide, of a modernized, updated Polizia di Prossimità (Community Policing).

For police and their unions, the reasons for demanding this major change were clear: First, "…[T]here is no direct relationship between expanding a police force and increasing public safety." Thus, merely increasing the numbers of police officers, without further and more fundamental changes in organization, will not reduce crime rates. This position is shared by many criminologists and police officials in other countries.

One top union official, SILP/CGIL Regional Coordinator Romeo Renis, spelled out the goals of their proposal for Community Policing in Italy: "The union program is for Community Policing that works closely with people and neighborhoods. It is not the same as the traditional "cop on the beat". Instead, the new Community Policing presents elements of innovation and forms a liaison between the more traditional forms of law enforcement and the new service oriented policing philosophy. It has new objectives. The right to a safe society implies an integration of strategies, policies, and outreach methods in the community."

Italian Public Safety Act of 2000

As a result of police union pressure, and general public activism, the Italian Parliament passed a comprehensive Community Policing Law on March 31, 2000. This legislative enactment authorized the national Secretary of Internal Affairs and Public Safety, Ministro dell'Interno, to unify, coordinate and direct all public safety operations and resources in Italy.

When the law came into effect, the Secretary of Internal Affairs immediately issued a directive unifying all public safety efforts in Italy. The directive orders close cooperation with local and regional police forces and other governmental agencies at all levels. The rationale is that, according to the Directive, no single agency can guarantee public safety acting alone.

The Directive also recognizes that policing and public safety issues are increasingly subject to European Union and other international efforts at coordination and organization. Thus, interagency exchanges and cooperation in planning and carrying out crime prevention programs have become very important. The Polizia di Stato will soon sponsor a series of conferences and seminars on effective Community Policing training methods.

Italy in the War on Terrorism

The European response to the September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda terrorist attack on the United States emphasizes international police and intelligence agency cooperation. This means a new role for many police forces, including EUROPOL, with headquarters in The Hague.

One of the chief tasks is to coordinate widespread, multilingual intelligence gathering and to harmonize databases and investigative approaches. Much of the new European anti-terrorist network was the concept of Italian officials, including former Minister of Internal Affairs Claudio Scajola, who advocated closer cooperation with US officials. As a result, Euro-American cooperation now features constant exchanges of intelligence and joint participation in dragnets or sweeps.

The Italian model features participation of Community Policing units in international task forces combating terrorism at all levels. According to Hon. Franco Frattini, Italy's Minister of Public Works, intelligence agencies and polizia di prossimità form a "natural team" to assimilate minority communities. The intensive, harmonious intelligence gathering and evaluation, in a neighborhood-friendly outreach action, add up to one of the best-known ways to combat terrorism.

Interagency Outreach

With the help of strong police unions, federal law and ministry directives, Italian police have intensified neighborhood service nationwide. They are working together with social services and other institutions dedicated to crime prevention, recovery of drug and alcohol addicts, and neighborhood and civic concerns generally.

One chief Italian task was to broaden Community Policing past the initial deployment of "Beat Officers" or "Senior Lead Officers". The perception throughout the 1990s was that these specialized liaison officers held a virtual monopoly on Community Policing. Accordingly, they were trained briefly in basic social service techniques, to the exclusion of other sworn officers.

After a series of studies showed that "Beat Officers" alone cannot be expected to lower crime rates single-handedly, public calls were made to improve and expand Community Policing and to integrate Beat Officers into a comprehensive, integrated training and deployment system covering all aspects of policing. Here, the credit goes to the police unions and their labor confederations, who took a clear position that:

"We cannot solve all of Italy's public safety problems with a few dozen beat officers per neighborhood trained somewhat in special intervention".

Since the end of 2001, Italian police nationwide have been concentrating new efforts on comprehensive, interagency action that connects up all available social and other resources in a consistent drive for crime prevention and improved social policy.

As a result of multilateral pressures to adopt the broadest possible concept, Italian Community Policing now features an integrated, interdisciplinary approach that includes the concerns and close cooperation of all relevant social services, health and mental health teams, rehabilitation centers, job training, homeless shelters and transitional sites.

In other initiatives, Italian federal legislation sets guidelines for police-medical street teams and interagency outreach. The 2000 Psychiatric Services Act contains the following main features:

	A psychiatric clinic in every population center of 100,000 or more
	Fully integrated police-medical street teams
	Outreach services within each 100,000 population area, including a psychiatric crisis intervention team
	Nationwide Mental Health Courts working in close cooperation with Community Policing units
	Community centers for homeless and mentally ill that double as triage and assessment centers
	An Italian version of New York's Kendra's Law expanding mental health holds, emergency treatment and clinical referrals

Reducing Crime Rates

Italian interagency cooperation, prescribed by law, has resulted in dramatic reductions in violent crimes, mental illness episodes on the streets, drug and alcohol addiction, and other categories of social problems. It has also reduced most categories of criminal recidivism.

One dramatic statistic emerging from the recent Italian changes took place in Palermo, long known as the capital of the Mafia. Gang-related homicides through the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s averaged over 200 per year in that city of 700,000: Less than one-fifth the population of Los Angeles. Community Policing began pursuing and eradicating the social and economic causes of teen-age gang recruitment in late 1997. By the end of 1999, the police-community teams had reduced the homicides to eleven per year. In 2000, there were only nine gang-related homicides in Palermo.

Nationwide, Italian Community Policing in its various local and regional forms prior to the 2000-2001 legislative overhaul produced good, if uneven, results. It reduced homicides rates by over 70 percent in eight years. Total homicides then continued to decline from 618 in 1999 to 607 in 2000, and to 590 in 2001. Residential burglaries are subsiding by some ten percent per year, and car thefts were reduced to 175,000 in 2001, a reduction of 16.8 percent per year over a three-year period.

Significantly, only those regions that failed to adopt comprehensive Community Programs during the pre-reform period up to 2000 (overwhelmingly for financial reasons) suffered rising violent crime rates. All of those states or regions are among the least developed economically in Italy.

In summary, Italy has undergone a thorough reform of police organizational structure and Community Policing philosophy. The country has made tremendous strides since 2000 in the field of interagency cooperation and community engagement. The vastly reduced crime statistics reflect the political will to improve policing shown by political officials, police labor unions, the rank and file, and the Italian citizenry generally. Flexible, efficient Community Policing also is proving to be a prime resource in the war on terrorism.

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© 2002, Arthur A. Jones and Robin Wiseman, all international rights reserved. Publication, reproduction and distribution only with express permission of authors. Fair use requires attribution. A complete bibliography is available by contacting Dr. Arthur Jones through the email link provided below.

--- Arthur A. Jones and Robin Wiseman are international human rights lawyers with legal educations in the United States and Europe. They are consultants and authors on international policing, social policy and human rights.

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