Verbano-Cusio-Ossola leads reported offences; Naples ranks 17th, and on homicides Milan and Rome sit at the bottom.
The record for reported offences per 100,000 residents does not belong to Naples. Nor to Caserta or Foggia. It belongs to Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, the alpine province of Verbania and Domodossola, all mountains and a postcard lake. In 2022 prosecutors logged 9,585 reported offences per 100,000 residents. That is more than double Naples, which sits at 4,508 and ranks only 17th nationally.
This week a travel guide again ties Naples to "mafia and decay". The figures tell a different map. The people who report the most live north of the Po.
Source: DatiItalia — analysis of ISTAT data
The ranking for total offences puts Barletta-Andria-Trani second, at 8,505 reports per 100,000, and Milan third, at 6,974. Rome follows fifth at 6,433. Naples, the popular capital of crime, sits below all three.
Part of the reason is technical. These are reported offences, not offences committed: where trust in institutions runs high and online scams hit the elderly, reports rise. Verbano-Cusio-Ossola also tops the fraud ranking. Yet the point holds: the map of fear does not match the map of the numbers.
On homicides the reversal is sharp. The province with the most homicides per 100,000 is Nuoro, in Sardinia, at 2.6. Naples is tenth, at 1.1. Milan and Rome sit at the bottom, both at 0.5: a fifth of the Sardinian rate.
Source: DatiItalia — analysis of ISTAT data
Thefts and robberies are led by the big cities of the centre-north. Milan tops robberies, 138 per 100,000 against Naples' 92.9. On thefts Milan records 3,712 reports per 100,000; Naples, twelfth, stops at 2,100, barely more than half.
A caveat is due. These data exist only at province level. There is no official count of offences by town, let alone by neighbourhood: knowing whether central Alba is safer than the edge of Bra, inside the same Cuneo province, is impossible with public numbers. Anyone promising safety rankings per town is estimating, not measuring.
The rest is economic geography. The provinces at the top are not the poorest: many rank high on average income and population density too, two measures that often travel with the reports.
Source: DatiItalia — analysis of ISTAT data
At the bottom of every total-offences ranking sits Cuneo: 727 reports per 100,000, thirteen times fewer than Verbano-Cusio-Ossola a few dozen kilometres away, in the same Piedmont. Two neighbouring provinces at opposite ends of the same table. Safety, in Italy, does not follow the north-south line everyone thinks they know.
Naples, Foggia, Nuoro, Verbania, Cuneo: the word "crime" changes meaning with the offence you look at. What is the number for your province?