Crime on the decline, and more: how can the shift towards a security-first approach be justified?

Good news, as we know, often tends to catch people off guard, to surprise them, to cause embarrassment; and when an observer, a politician or an intellectual finds themselves faced with a positive figure concerning their own country, they try by every means to press on with reading the reports, the tables and the trends, seeking solace in some other figure that will allow them to continue lulling themselves, as always, in that sweet, comforting, reassuring and much-loved whinge. There are instances in politics where good news embarrasses those in opposition. There are instances in politics where good news embarrasses those in government. There are cases, such as today’s, where good news in politics manages to embarrass everyone: supporters of the ruling party and supporters of the opposition alike. The good news worth mentioning today is that which will be presented, as is customary on 15 August, by the Home Secretary, and it concerns a precious commodity known as security. The figures are excellent. In the first half of 2026, crime fell by ten per cent. Intentional homicides were down by 15.3 per cent, thefts by 11.4 per cent, robberies by 12.3 per cent, and sexual assaults by 7.1 per cent. This data presents a delicate issue for the opposition to handle, as their rhetoric aimed at demonstrating that Italy is less safe under the Meloni government finds no basis in reality (according to the Ministry of the Interior’s operational records, there were 328 murders in 2022, 335 in 2023, remained broadly stable in 2024, plummeted to 286 in 2025 – a fall of 15 per cent, the lowest figure in the last decade – and in the first half of 2026 fell further from 163 to 138, a drop of 15.3 per cent).

But the data in question is, paradoxically, difficult to handle even for the right, because the fact that Italy is much safer than the right often portrays it to be is a small time bomb ticking beneath the framework that has underpinned its security measures for years: Italy is unsafe; there is too much trouble, too much crime, too many disasters, too many dangers; and because of all these problems, we need tighter restrictions, new criminal offences, harsher penalties, new security measures and new security decrees. The figures provided by the Ministry of the Interior demonstrate unequivocally that the sense of insecurity in Italy is largely the result of a psychosis fuelled by the left, from the opposition, and the right fails to govern, from within government, because it is accustomed to responding to questions on security by relying, as it always has, more on perceived security than on actual security; and it does not take much to realise, as we have already written in these columns, that if you train voters to regard the parameters of perceived security as the only ones to be considered when discussing security, you will inevitably end up governing by relying more on perceived data than on actual figures. One might argue that the fall in crime is precisely due to the government’s crackdown on security, but if you take a broader view and examine crime trends, you will see that the reduction in many offences is a long-term structural trend that has been affecting Italy for years. Examples: between 2013 and 2019, reported offences fell from around 2.9 million to 2.302 million – a 20 per cent drop over six years. But even the opposition cannot get away with claiming that the 10 per cent decline in 2026 is simply a continuation of a trend that has always been in place. That is not the case. After the Covid pandemic, crime rates began to rise again, and this increase continued until 2024.

The recent reversal began in 2025, when crime fell by 1.8 per cent, and accelerated sharply in the first half of 2026. The government cannot, therefore, take credit for the historic decline in Italian crime, which began long before Meloni, but the opposition cannot pretend that the reversal recorded over the last eighteen months does not exist. A second statistic that puts the prophets of doom in a difficult position concerns a very sensitive issue: femicides. In 2022, 130 women were murdered; in 2023, 120 according to the Interior Ministry’s figures; in 2024, 118; and in 2025, 97. These figures are still very high, but they point to a truth that few have the courage to state explicitly: in less than three years, the number of women killed has fallen by around a quarter. It is more difficult to determine the extent to which awareness-raising campaigns, active policies, prevention measures, legislation and public policies have contributed to this, but the figure stands. Here and throughout, we use the term ‘femicide’ in its current sense, bearing in mind that the new criminal offence only came into force at the end of 2025 and that the previous data series are not perfectly comparable. In the first half of 2026, the report presented today by the Ministry of the Interior will reveal another significant figure: the number of victims remains high at 34, but this is 37 per cent lower than last year, when the figure stood at 54 after six months. Discussing the results of the fight against femicide is controversial because, for some, presenting the figures is seen as an attempt to downplay the issue, lower the threshold of public concern or normalise it – when it is clear that highlighting improving trends can also have another effect: demonstrating that change is possible. A similar argument can, in essence, be made regarding another interesting figure from the Interior Ministry’s report, which concerns arrivals by sea. When it comes to curbing irregular immigration, the centre-right government can claim mixed results. The first full year under the Meloni government was 2023, when there was a surge in arrivals: up 50 per cent on 2022, from 105,000 to 158,000.

Following the disaster of 2023, however, things really did change. Landings fell from 157,651 to 66,617 in 2024, a drop of 58 per cent. They remained virtually unchanged in 2025, at 66,316. And in the first half of 2026, they plummeted further from 30,060 to 14,388, a fall of 52.1 per cent. The Interior Ministry’s report attributes part of this result to cooperation with Libya and Tunisia and records 275,463 departures prevented between 2023 and June 2026. The issue is clear. If the left, as it did when Sánchez presented figures showing that Spain’s repatriation record was better than Italy’s, wishes to criticise the centre-right government for being ineffective, it should have the courage to say what it lacks the strength to say: we need to take a tougher line on irregular migrants. If, on the other hand, the right were to draw any lessons from what has happened in recent years with regard to irregular immigration, it should have the courage to admit that landings do not follow a long-term trend, like murders, but are volatile, depending on many factors, including routes, the situation in North Africa, agreements with transit countries, the ability of local authorities to prevent departures, and shifts towards other Mediterranean routes (side note: the Ministry of the Interior points out that in the first half of 2026 there were 4,432 repatriations: +34.3 per cent, but the figures must be put into context: in 2018 there were 6,820 forced returns, in 2019 7,054, and in 2025 the report indicates a total of 6,772 returns – good figures, but no better than those already recorded in the past). Good news, as we know, often takes us by surprise, frightens us and catches us unprepared; and the good news in recent months has also taken the right-wing government by surprise, when it found itself having to come to terms with positive developments that have come about thanks to the use of tools which the right has always opposed (the record tax revenues recorded by the state as a result of the fight against tax evasion were achieved through the widespread use of digital payment tracking, which the right has always demonised, before coming to power and adopting these measures itself).

But if a piece of good news takes us by surprise, frightens us or makes us feel uneasy, rather than hiding it – even at the cost of feeling disoriented – that news deserves to be examined, understood and analysed; and if it serves to challenge our own certainties, so much the better. Good news does exist, even if it is frightening, and to try to focus a little less on perception and a little more on reality, we must sooner or later resign ourselves to considering not only comforting bad news but also disorienting and formidable good news as newsworthy enough to be published prominently, in the knowledge that today’s pessimists, as Giuliano Ferrara suggests, are not well-informed optimists but are, often, ill-informed pessimists, sometimes even misled by their own followers.