Italy: A Tale of Two Police Forces
Richard O. Collin tells the story of Italy’s parallel police forces, and how they have contended with Mussolini, the Red Brigades – and the Mafia.
Looking at Italy today, penologists see a curiously non-violent society which becomes progressively less murderous with every passing year.
Despite past images of Mafia gunmen, jealous lovers, and Red Brigade assassins, present-day violations of the Italian criminal code tend to be rather more gentle. Even twentieth- century Italian civil conflicts have been relatively bloodless; the 1919-22 turmoil that saw Mussolini’s fascisti destroy the country’s fledgling democracy only cost about 2,000 lives – and produced about as many books.
When Italians themselves have looked at Italy, however, they have historically seen rampaging anarchy, time-bombs ticking, and daggers drawn as criminals and subversives compete for the honour of destroying the social order. When the peninsula found itself haphazardly unified in the mid-19th century, Italy’s founding fathers inherited many policemen and many enemies. Nervously, they recruited even more policemen to fight bandits and revolutionaries (often the same people).
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