Italy
Italy regularly reports hate crime data to ODIHR. Italy's Criminal Code contains general penalty-enhancement and substantive offence provisions. Hate crime data are collected by law enforcement authorities and the Ministry of Interior. Data are not made publicly available.
How hate crime data is collected
Italian legislation does not provide a definition of hate crime. Hate crimes, like all other crimes, are recorded by competent police officers. There is no instruction or policy document to guide police in identifying and recording hate crimes.
Initial crime reports, including victim information and information about police action and legal qualification, are entered into and stored in the Sistema di Indagine (SDI) investigation crime database. The SDI is organized according to different criminal law provisions, which are marked on every report entered into the system. For this reason, the SDI system only serves to register strands of hate crime mentioned in the law, including ethnicity, nationality, race, religion or crime against national linguistic minorities. There is no specific marker for each bias motivation in the SDI so crimes cannot be distinguished from one another in the database according to motive. Crimes committed on discriminatory grounds other than those explicitly outlined in the law (e.g., gender identity or sexual orientation) are entered in the SDI as ordinary offences.
A separate system exists for monitoring these additional strands of hate crimes. The Observatory for Security against Discriminatory Acts (OSCAD) collects reports of these crimes. Not all the reports collected by OSCAD are included in the SDI database. In 2011, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between OSCAD and the National Office against Racial Discrimination (UNAR) of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. UNAR and OSCAD exchange information about incidents on this basis. Through this mechanism, UNAR reports to OSCAD hate crime cases reported to its contact centre.
A government unit is responsible for managing the national SDI database, including hate crimes. The Service of the Multi-Agency Information System is part of the Ministry of the Interior's Central Directorate of Criminal Police of the Department of Public Security.
As the SDI does not allow hate crime bias motivations to be distinguished, only aggregated data on all monitored strands of hate crime are available. This aggregate number includes hate crimes committed on the grounds of race/colour of skin, ethnicity, origin, minority status, citizenship, language, bias against Roma and Sinti, and bias against religion (including anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim, anti-Christian and other religions).
Official Data
Hate crimes recorded by police
The data presented here includes information from the police database (SDI) and information gathered by the Observatory for Security against Acts of Discrimination (OSCAD). The breakdown below consists of: (i) SDI data with motivations "race/colour"; ethnicity; nationality; language; anti-Semitism; Roma and Sinti; Muslims; members of other religions; (ii) OSCAD data with motivations "sexual orientation; transgender identity"; (iii) SDI and OSCAD data with motivation "disability".
National developments
The Criminal Code's hate crime provisions were amended to correspond with EU law requirements.
A working group, "Permanent board to combat hate crime and hate speech", was set up at the Ministry of Justice with wide participation of civil society in order to provide advice on required measures to address hate crimes.
The Observatory for Security against Acts of Discrimination (OSCAD) has been tasked by the Chief of Police to focus its work on the implementation of a communication campaign to prevent hate crimes and continued training activities on hate crimes for the Carabinieri Corps and the National Police.
OSCAD has continued training police officers, in co-operation with the National Police, Carabinieri Corps and national Forestry Corps. OSCAD has developed e-learning modules on hate crimes, put in use by the National Police territorial units in charge of training efforts.
International reports
No information is available.
Key observation
ODIHR observes that Italy has not reported the numbers of prosecuted and information on sentenced hate crime cases to ODIHR.
