Criminality in Italy (1992)

The publication of the results of this survey comes shortly after the brutal massacre in which Judge Falcone lost his life, a massacre that has aroused a wave of indignation in the Country that finds precedents only in the assassination of General Dalla Chiesa and the even more remote assassination of Aldo Moro. In this context, it is, at the least, evident that the criminal emergency is, by now, at the top of the list of issues to be dealt with. However, there are no particularly indicative signs of a democratic and institutional recovery to date. Instead, one cannot help noticing the rising state of discontent and mistrust in the Institutions among the citizens of both the regions affected by the mafia gangrene and the rest of the Country. The mafia crisis tends to overlap with the other two great questions that characterise the Country’s current malaise: the political representation and the public debt, which has now reached huge levels.

However, this survey intended to ascertain the attitude of the Italians towards the criminal question. Moreover, it has the merit of having been carried out before the assassination of Falcone: therefore, it is not affected by the surge of indignation that has crossed a Country concentrated on the election of the new Head of State, without a Government, weakened by the institutional vacuum and by a parliamentary order in the grip of a sort of polish syndrome atomised in a myriad of parties and small parties, of vetoes and counter-vetoes.