*About 9% of the population is of foreign origin, in the article we see their crime statistics.*

*There's only one logical conclusion: numbers are racist. /s*

**Italy – One third of reported offenders are foreigners: the integration that isn’t there**

34.7% of those criminally prosecuted are foreign nationals, and the share soars to 60% for predatory crimes. Among the most alarming figures are the proportion of under-17s and the importation of group sexual assault. A warning about future critical issues for national security.

In 2024, 34.7% of those criminally prosecuted—more than one third of reported individuals—were foreign nationals, a figure that rises to over 60% when the analysis focuses on the scourge of predatory crimes.

Compared with 2019—the baseline year before the paralysis caused by the health emergency—the increase is stark: an 8.1% rise in reports, pushing the total beyond 265,869 individuals. But to understand the phenomenon, demographics matter: Italy today hosts 5.7 million foreigners, 9% of the total population, and there are about 321,000 irregular migrants.

From a long-term analytical perspective, one of the most authoritative studies on the subject commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior (Barbagli, Colombo, 2011)—based on monitoring the twenty-year period from 1988 to 2009—showed that as many as 70% of crimes attributable to foreign citizens were committed by individuals in an irregular status. Current dynamics indicate that nothing has changed.

The data reveal a form of criminal specialization in which foreigners predominate in arrests for the most “visible” offenses: pickpocketing 69%; snatch thefts 61%; street robberies 60.1%; sexual violence 43%; drug dealing 39%; car thefts 24.5%; smuggling 29%; intentional homicide 23.7%. These are staggering magnitudes, all the more so when set against the small statistical share this group represents of the overall national population.

Geographically, Prato tops the list of cities where foreigners account for the largest share of arrests: in the Tuscan province, one resident in four is a foreign citizen and 62% of those behind bars are not Italian. Milan and Florence follow, leading the ranking of metropolitan areas most affected by street crime; here, the share of offenders of foreign nationality reaches critical levels, at 55.8% and 56% respectively. At the same time, border provinces such as Imperia, Bolzano, and Trieste—all with rates above 50%—confirm that Europe’s gateways are, more than ever, the seismographs of an integration that does not exist.

At the same time, the sanctions system reveals a parallel blind spot. The “External Penal Area” is bureaucratic shorthand for the 140,000 convicted individuals who are not behind bars; among them, more than 30,000 are foreigners. In other words, around our cities there are thirty thousand convicted immigrants who remain at liberty, adding to the 20,000 in prison. This pool has been fueled by the Cartabia Reform, which prevents incarceration for sentences under four years, leaving various types of offenders free to circulate.

Statistical surveys by the Department for Juvenile and Community Justice updated to January 15, 2026 precisely outline the profile of these “invisibles”: a contingent made up of Moroccans, Albanians, Tunisians, Nigerians, Egyptians, Peruvians, Ukrainians, and so on.

Then there is the issue of REMS (Residences for the Execution of Security Measures): 25% of residents are foreigners, with a 30% share among refugees and asylum seekers suffering from post-traumatic disorders. Overcrowding in these facilities creates dangerous bottlenecks, with individuals in need of care and potentially violent remaining free due to a lack of beds—turning psychological distress into a public-order alarm. A telling example is the foreign national who, in Rome’s San Lorenzo district, brutally assaulted several passers-by—culminating in the attack on a mother struck in the face while cycling with her child—yet whose legal status nonetheless ensured his continued freedom.

If ministerial tables are surgical in quantifying inflows, they become reticent when it comes to revocations. There is no public database on terminated measures or on those who violate conditions and return to prison. Local news, however, fills the statistical silence: from Naples to Bologna, from Agrigento to Ferrara, incidents are multiplying in which semi-detained individuals, taking advantage of probation or community service, reoffend.

Complicating matters further is the case law of the Court of Cassation (ruling no. 15896/2024), which establishes that a single “deviant behavior” is no longer sufficient grounds for the automatic revocation of benefits. Punishment thus becomes blurred: no longer an inviolable boundary, but an elastic path where committing a crime does not always mean returning to a cell.

This analysis cannot overlook the most alarming datum: the emergence of a new criminal geography rooted in juvenile delinquency. In March 2025, the Antigone report counted 597 detainees in juvenile facilities; of these, 49.9% were foreigners, predominantly unaccompanied minors from the Maghreb.

The figures on criminal liability among under-17s are unequivocal: foreigners account for 59.4% of arrests for theft, 59.8% for robbery, and 41.7% for extortion. Even bleaker is the balance for violent crimes, with a 47.3% share in attempted homicides.

Recent reporting crystallizes this emergency in brutally clear episodes. In January 2026, in La Spezia, eighteen-year-old Zouhair Atif stabbed to death his peer Abanoub Youssef at the “Einaudi Chiodi” institute. A few days earlier in Rome, a ministry official was the victim of a ferocious beating at Termini station at the hands of a gang of young foreigners. Similarly, in Turin, eight North Africans aged between 15 and 20 were identified as responsible for an episode of urban guerrilla violence, carried out with knives and blank-firing guns during pro-Palestinian marches.

The alarm also extends to sexual violence with the emergence of *taharrush gamea* (group assault), imported into Italy by Islamist immigrants in a sequence that began in 2022 and has since become relentless. Not to mention the emblematic cases in Padua, where three young North Africans—led by a ringleader with a criminal record dating back to childhood—abused a girl at knifepoint, and in Catania, where seven Egyptian minors hosted in a reception center were identified as the perpetrators of the rape of a thirteen-year-old girl in the gardens of Villa Bellini.

The facts reported and the statistical evidence do not constitute a mere judicial balance sheet; they represent the primary predictive indicator of future critical challenges for national security. The experience of London and Paris should have served as a timely warning; instead, after similarly importing social dynamics and violent subcultures alien to our context, the system now struggles even to detect the phenomenon—let alone act as a barrier against it.