Thirty years of urban security policies in Italy: Some reflections from a criminological perspective

Abstract

The term “urban security” appeared in Italy at the beginning of the 1990s, following new criminological approaches to community safety and crime prevention developed mostly by proponents of British Left Realism. The concept of urban security was the basis for a new public policy field, urban security policy (USP), originally characterized by a preventive approach and mostly promoted in Italy by local authorities. Around 2008, however, centralization began, and the national government started to define priorities and strategies. In parallel, interventions shifted towards a more punitive approach, based on a mix
of administrative and criminal measures. This paper aims at taking stock of the development of these policies, analyzing in particular in what ways they have been influenced and shaped by criminological theories and research findings. The focus is on some particularly significant issues: the crime-fear nexus, the relation between crime and migration, the shift from street crime to disorder and incivilities, which implies the shift to situational crime prevention measures, and the tension between local and national levels of urban security policies.