Murder in Italy. Characteristics and tendencies from the Unification to the present day

Abstract

This paper deals with three themes: the long-term tendencies of committed and attempted murder in Italy from the Unification to the present day, i.e. from the time when the data at our disposal enable longitudinal analyses; the changes in murder from the perspective of two essential qualities, the spatial distribution and the circumstances in which murders were committed; the changes in the protagonists, the victims in particular. None of these issues is new in the research on murder, but this contribution departs from literature for two reasons. Firstly, it presents updated or unpublished data and analyses from the research carried out on the police records, in addition to the traditional administrative sources. Secondly, it aims to provide possible explanations of the tendencies detected, as the explanations available in the literature on these issues show two limits: the difficulty in explaining the reversal that concerns our country (as well as the other ones); the fact that some factors of great interest for criminology are often neglected, first of all the victim’s role.