Milan and Rome are the Cities with the most crime in Italy

The financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore has, as it does every year, published a ranking of the most and least safe provincial capitals in Italy, and the results are worrying, confirming the failure of large urban centers.

Slightly less than one in three (30 percent) complaints in 2023 were filed in the capitals of the 14 metropolitan cities. More specifically, 15 percent of crimes are detected within the municipalities of Milan and Rome.  It is official: Milan has the highest number of complaints (7,093 per 100,000 people). The Capital comes in second, up 11 percent from the previous year (6,071 complaints per 100,000 people).

Just below: Florence (3rd), Rimini (4th), Turin (5th), Bologna (6th), Prato (7th), Imperia (8th) and Livorno (10th). Among the few new entries is Naples (12th), which gives way to Venice (9th) among the top ten provinces in terms of the number of crimes recorded in 2023.

The weight of metropolitan areas (and the most touristy cities) should not come as a surprise: Milan and Rome are home to about 13 percent of the Italian population, and on the frequency of offenses plays a key role the presence of visitors and city users who often become the target of predatory crimes, such as theft or robbery, going to feed the statistics. “The rise in crimes during the summer months due to the influx of people to the Riviera, which is accompanied by the strong civic sense of the people of Romagna, is what strongly influences Rimini’s figure,” says Paola Cassone, the prefect of Rimini.

Milan ranks first among the 106 provinces mapped by data from the Interior Ministry’s Department of Public Security in the number of reported thefts in relation to population, second for robberies, third for sexual assaults and fifth for drug-related crimes. Overall, reported crimes in the metropolitan area are up slightly: up 4.9 percent from pre-Covid. On Oct. 2, 2023, almost a year ago,

Mayor Beppe Sala appointed former Police Chief Franco Gabrielli to the post of Delegate for Security and Social Cohesion, and right now the Lombard capital is discussing the possible change of Local Police Commander. None of the measures taken by the mayor and security chief have had any effect; in fact, the number of evening patrols has decreased, and Milan is an increasingly less safe city. Even in Milan, first- or second-generation immigrant youth, the so-called “Maranza,” are an element of great instability.

Behind Rome’s jump (+11 percent year-on-year, +16.7 percent over 2019), however, growing predatory crime and phenomena related to urban decay play a role: the capital this year ranks second in the number of thefts (with 3.465 complaints per 100,000 inhabitants), up 17 percent year-on-year; in 2023, public street robberies increased by 24 percent compared to 2022; for crimes related to drug trafficking and dealing, the capital closely follows La Spezia’s lead.

The numbers need to be put into perspective, however, by looking at the historical trend of complaints in the Capital: crime recovery after the “pandemic break” is returning to 2017-2018 levels, but it still remains far from the complaint volumes of the previous decade.

The rise in robberies, in particular, weighs on many big cities. Tourist Florence has a record for reporting robberies (136 per 1,000 inhabitants): those on public streets – 1,034 incidents in 2023 – have grown 56 percent in the last year alone. Here, too, the authorities say that public safety is the priority, but, in reality, they are unable to do much.