Italy: police & security agencies
01 January 1991
Italy: police & security agencies
bacdoc July=1995
The information in this country file was first published in the
handbook "Statewatching the new Europe" (November 1993). It was
compiled by Peter Klerks and extracted from a longer report which
is available from: The Domestic Security Research Foundation, PO
Box 11178, 1001 GD, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Italy
301,230 km², 57,772,375 inhabitants
Long-form name: Italian Republic
Type: republic
Capital: Rome
Administrative divisions: 20 regions (regioni, singular--regione)
Constitution: 1 January 1948
Legal system: based on civil law system, with ecclesiastical law
influence; appeals treated as trials de novo; judicial review
under certain conditions in Constitutional Court; has not
accepted compulsory ICJ jurisdiction
Executive branch: president, prime minister (president of the
Council of Ministers)
Legislative branch: bicameral Parliament (Parlamento) consists
of an upper chamber or Senate of the Republic (Senato della
Repubblica) and a lower chamber or Chamber of Deputies (Camera
dei Deputati)
Judicial branch: Constitutional Court (Corte Costituzionale)
I. POLICE STRUCTURES & forces
Total no. of police officers (1989 estimate, Semerak): 257,000
(Polizia di Stato 80,000, Carabinieri 85,000 (Hazenberg, 1992,
gives a total of 111,400 personnel for the Carabinieri), Guardia
di Finanza 42,000, Polizia Municipale 50,000). Women in the
police: approx. 5%. No. of police officers per 100,000
inhabitants: 445 (EC av. 338)
Responsibility for keeping the peace and enforcing the law comes
under the Public Security Authority in the Ministry for Internal
Affairs. The Prefetto in each of the 92 provinces is empowered
to direct all the police forces within the province, and is
directly answerable to the Interior Minister. In daily practice
the Direttore General di Polizia di Stato (Chief of Police in the
Interior Ministry) instructs the senior police official in each
province, the Questore, and the latter has an apparatus of senior
civil servants to execute government policy and a commissario to
supervise each major city in the province. The Questore is head
of the State Police Questura (HQ), located in each provincial
capital. The Polizia di Stato (State Police) also has riot
control capacities in the Mobile Units, which can be deployed
anywhere in the country.
Parallel to this structure are the largely autonomous
Carabinieri who, although formally answerable to the Interior
Ministry line of command during peacetime, are in fact directed
by their central command in Rome. There has always been
institutional rivalry between the two forces. The Carabinieri
commander is a three-star general on temporary assignment from
the army, and all personnel are recruited from the regular army.
The Carabinieri are responsible for riot control, for which a
complete miniature army is kept at the ready. Helicopters and
fixed-wing aircraft as well as a small fleet of coastal patrol
vessels assist in other tasks, including anti-smuggling
operations, standard police work and crime detection, narcotics
investigations, protection of VIPs and state institutions,
supplying the secret services with trained personnel. Small
villages will normally only have Carabinieri. They are also the
Military Police, and have specific duties of keeping order and
maintaining public security, being fundamentally a military
bureaucracy with a corresponding ideology.
The Ministry of Finance has its own 40,000 strong police
force, the Guardia di Finanza, a military force which assists in
enforcing tax, excise, customs and tariff legislation. The mayors
of most towns and villages also have some form of local police,
the Polizia Municipale, covering the road network and local
administration (licences, markets, public health, etc.).
Numbering around 60,000, they do not play a great role in law
enforcement. Several other bodies, such<