Italy

In 2021, OSCAD organized a one-day training entitled "When hatred becomes a crime" as part of a professional update for all state police personnel. The training content was delivered through the SISFOR platform (On Line Law Enforcement Training System), accessible to all state police personnel. The platform and the related content are also accessible to other national police forces (the Carabinieri Corps and the Guardia di Finanza) and to local police agencies.  

In March 2021, together with the CSO CILD and the Advocacy for LGBTI Rights-Lenford Network, OSCAD co-organized a two-day training-of-trainers course for 33 officers (18 of the state police and 15 of the Carabinieri Corps) to apply the training manual on "Policing Hate Crimes Against LGBTI Persons", as part of a Council of Europe project. In the future, the training course will be monitored by the Council of Europe. 

Furthermore, in October 2021, ODIHR conducted a training-of-trainers session on "Police and Roma – Effective and Human Rights-Compliant Policing", which includes a module on hate crime. Nine Carabinieri officers and nine state police officers participated in the training and are due to deliver cascaded training sessions in future. 

OSCAD also co-organized a CEPOL Course 44/2021 on hate crime that took place in Italy in November 2021. The course was attended by 26 European law enforcement officers specialized in the fight against hate crimes and online hate speech.  

As a result of these cascaded hate crime training courses, a total of 3,333 personnel, including police cadets and senior sergeants, were trained in 2021. 

In 2021, a co-ordination centre set up by UNAR produced an initial draft of a national strategy for LGBTI (2021-2025). A technical group set up by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers also produced a national strategy to combat anti-Semitism.  

Notable case: 

In March 2021, a man wearing a necklace with a Jewish pendant was stabbed by another man outside a fast-food restaurant in the centre of Rome. The victim was subjected to racist and anti-Semitic insults owing to their skin colour and perceived Jewish identity. Police investigations led to the identification of the perpetrator, who was placed under house arrest and charged with bodily harm, the use of a weapon, and the aggravating circumstances of racial discrimination, as well as with the unlawful carry of an item intended to inflict harm.