Sicily faces a rising tide of violent crime
Without the means to deal with it
It is really not good news from Sicily (which I will visit once more in October) and I feel that I am in danger of repeating myself, but once more fights seem to be the order of the night on Saturdays.
This Saturday, in Vittoria, province of Ragusa, in the southern corner of the island, the Mayor was woken up in the middle of the night by sounds of riot coming from the town square. The Giornale di Sicilia tells us:
"The Mayor, Francesco Aiello, who lives in the area, witnessed the scene. ‘I was in bed and I heard screams coming from the square at around 1 am. I got up and went to a window that offers a good view of the square. I saw dozens of people, some fighting, others who seemed to be running away, and I realised that it was a brawl. I called the commander of the municipal police who, in turn, alerted the Carabinieri. Upon their arrival, they found the square deserted… What happened worries me, I will ask the police commissioner to issue expulsion orders to any people who may be responsible.’ Aiello recalls having asked the Ministry of the Interior for permission to hire thirty municipal police officers. ‘I asked a year ago. I haven't received a response yet. We have a staff of 33 local police officers in service. In the past there were 102.”
Now I do realise that there are brawls in virtually every English town at closing time on Saturday nights, but this is Sicily where on the whole revellers are well-natured. One notes that the Mayor talks of expulsion orders, which means what he witnessed was a brawl between people who were obviously not Italian. And like everyone else, he laments the lack of police.
On the very same night, things kicked off in Palermo:
“More violence in Palermo where in the night between yesterday and today (Sunday 8 June) two gangs clashed in Piazza del Carmine, the beating heart of the Ballarò market and of drug dealing. The police are investigating the episode. During the fight, which probably broke out over drug dealing issues, knives were drawn: the one who got the worst of it was a man who, after being injured, ran away and found refuge among the cars parked on the road that connects Ballarò to Via Maqueda. He was found by some passers-by, who immediately dialled 118. A few minutes later the ambulance arrived on the scene, managing to take aboard the injured man despite his resistance. The young man was transported to the hospital at Policlinico.”
The story is accompanied by pictures of a long trail of blood on the cobbles. The injured party is described at 31 years old and a foreign citizen, which would explain his his reluctance to go to hospital. He will face criminal charges and possible expulsion.
But it is not just Palermo. What about Naro, a small town in the province of Agrigento? Here things really got out of hand.
“A group of about twenty Romanians, from two different families, clashed in a massive brawl, which also involved five women, a couple of children and several teenagers, in Piazza Padre Favara in Naro. Knives and clubs were in evidence. Several people, with stab wounds, ended up in the emergency room of the Barone Lombardo hospital in Canicattì. A twenty-one-year-old, in serious condition, underwent delicate surgery and is now hospitalized - the doctors are unable to say whether he will survive or not - in the intensive care unit. The carabinieri have already identified all those involved who will be reported for aggravated brawling and, depending on their position, for illegal possession of weapons.”
So it might be a matter of murder in the case of Naro. And what were these two families fighting over? One can only wonder. One notes too that they were foreigners, as in the two previous cases.
The solution? More policing, but that is easier said than done, especially when the Mayor of Vittoria does not get any reply for over a year from the Ministry of the Interior. As for locking up criminals, the latest news is that Sicily’s premier (one uses that word rather awkwardly) prison is, according to the prison officers condemned to work there, on the brink of collapse. Conditions in Ucciardone are not good, and the amount of assaults on prison officers of late has confirmed that the place is out of control.
What exactly is wrong? The prison officers say there is a series of fundamental shortcomings, including the “lack of furniture, mattresses and freezers for the inmates, worsening their living conditions in a Bourbon-era structure such as Ucciardone, with repercussions for the working conditions of the staff, who have been suffering for some time from a lack of personnel, unsustainable workloads and shift patterns. Often tempers become frayed for the lack of plexiglass screens or a small table or even finding paint to make an office or a cell decent. The visitor department has long been unable to use some rooms for interviews between inmates and their families. The staff, given the increase in face to face visits as well as video calls, thanks to the increase in the prison population in recent months, are forced to work shifts that far exceed six hours a day.”
These dire conditions are of some standing, and one wonders where all the money allotted by the state has gone. Italy has always been a high tax, high spend, society. But get banged up in Ucciardone, and you will not even have a mattress to sleep on. And why has the prison population risen of late?
One answer is because the Italian state, as of July 2023, was host to over 18,000 foreign prisoners. (The figures are here.) The prison capacity in Italy is just over 50,000, though in 2024 about 60,000 were incarcerated. (See here.) So that means that almost a third of those in jail are foreigners.
The challenges facing the Italian criminal justice system are enormous. And do not forget this is in a country that already uses house arrest widely. In 2021, 11,000 people were under house arrest, see here. As they say in Italy, ‘Siamo all’ultima spiaggia.’ (We are on the last beach.) This time it looks true.
