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 the 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 into 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 submits 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/skin colour, 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 covering the following bias motivations: "race/colour"; ethnicity; nationality; language; anti-Semitism; bias against Roma and Sinti; bias against Muslims; and bias against members of other religions; and (ii) OSCAD data on hate crimes motivated by bias against "sexual orientation and transgender identity" and bias against people with "disability".
National developments
The Criminal Code's hate crime provisions were amended to correspond with the requirements of EU law. Consequently, changes to the aggravating circumstance provision preclude the bias motivation aggravation to be balanced against other, mitigating circumstances.
The Observatory for Security against Acts of Discrimination (OSCAD) continued to conduct training activities on hate crimes for a broad target group, including different ranks of the Carabinieri Corps and the National Police. This has also included the cascading of ODIHR's TAHCLE programme.
International reports
Bias against Roma and Sinti
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The Council of Europe's Ad Hoc Committee Of Experts On Roma And Traveller Issues (CAHROM) published relevant recommendations in its "Thematic Report on Roma and Travellers' Access to Justice (with a gender focus)."
Key observation
ODIHR observes that Italy has not reported the numbers of prosecuted hate crimes or information on the sentencing of hate crime cases to ODIHR.
