I shall try in a few words to sketch out the threat of crime in Italy, beginning with a few remarks on criminal trends without drawing the traditional distinction between organised crime and common crime, and then moving on to address some of the emergency situations that, in my opinion, not only constitute the most serious threat to the country as a whole, but are of common concern on a much wider scale.
I hope to be able to provide a few ideas to be used to work out new forms of co-operation between intelligence services and police forces drawing on the experience of Italy and the other countries represented here.
The international community is now mobilised on a wide scale, as occurred with terrorism in the past, to work out increasingly effective types of co-operation between governments in fighting organised crime, in many different spheres, such as bilateral agreements, and attracting the broad consensus of the United Nations and the European Community as it sets about launching the Europol Project. This process was set in motion several years ago when crime was put on the agenda of the Trevi Group which had been set up to combat terrorism, leading subsequently to the embryonic Europol, made up of the drug enforcement units under the Maastricht Agreements. These units have now had their mandate broadened to cover new areas of criminal activity (the trafficking in nuclear and radioactive substances, illegal immigration networks, the illegal traffic in vehicles, and money laundering).
In other words, we are moving rapidly towards all-round co-operation in fighting organised crime, on the understanding that it is a serious threat to the whole community. According to our legislation the threat is so serious that it not only jeopardizes "social coexistence" but also national security (which is why our intelligence services have become involved).
For several years the crime rate has kept on rising, until 1991, when the trend was reversed, in some cases markedly so, coinciding with the corresponding increase in law enforcement and the rise in the number of reported crimes and arrests.
A glance at the general crime statistics for the five-year period 1990-94 (annex 1) shows that the number of wilful murders fell gradually from 1,812 in 1991 to 956 in 1994; bombings declined from 2,600 to 1,594, and there was a general downturn in the total of crimes of about 18 per cent throughout that period. There was also a fall in the number of kidnappings (from 12 in 1991 to 4 in 1994, 3 of which were cleared up rapidly), which now only occur in Sardinia, and even there they are only carried out as a means of making money to become involved in the far more lucrative drug trade. The number of people reported and arrested rose, on the other hand, by 46 per cent and 87 per cent, respectively, between 1990 and 1994.
Making allowances for the ambiguity of statistics and figures, one undeniable conclusion may be drawn: while criminals keep on committing crimes on a grand scale, law enforcement has been so effective that it has not only stopped the rising crime rate, but has sharply reversed it.
Although I am well aware that the situation is still extremely worrying, I will now try to answer one question that I feel particularly relevant: "How far have such measures been successful in staving off the most serious threat, namely the threat of organised crime?"
We must therefore use more specific, unambiguous and highly representative parameters for assessing organised crime. I believe that what typifies the Mafia more than anything else is the fact that it is an organised conspiracy, and in Italy this is a specific crime which is prosecuted "in se" and "per se", defined as a "conspiracy of Mafia-type" (art. 416 bis of the Criminal Code). The definition given may be useful to see in full: "a conspiracy of Mafia-type is the one whose members use the intimidatory force of the bond of membership and the resultant state of subjection and secrecy for the commission of crimes ...".
Equally typical of the Mafia and the most evident sign of its economic and financial strength is the property of the gangs, particularly in their home regions, viewing this property no differently from any other asset. This property includes Mafia-owned companies, which are the physical elements of the organisational structure of a particular Mafia gang, even though they may not have been acquired using wholly criminal means. (I will not mention the statutory provision here, which is not particularly simple to follow, which includes the seizure of property as one of the preventive measures that may be taken with regard to property, with the possibility of ordering prior seizure separately from and parallel to a criminal prosecution).
Two objectively sound parameters are therefore the number of individuals detained under article 416-bis, and the amount of property that has been impounded and operative one.
The number of detainees under article 416-bis is rising constantly: from 2,130 in 1992, to 3,340 in 1993 and 3,997 in 1994. As far as property seizure is concerned, last year the value reached almost 2 billion lira's, and already in 1995 the figure stands at 1,200 billion.
Another telling datum is the size of the prison population, because this provides an objective indication of how many Mafia members considered to be particularly dangerous are behind bars. They are subject to a different type of prison regime, under which they are not only detained in prison but they are also effectively prevented from having any contacts within the prison and with the outside world, thereby isolating them from their gangs and ensuring that they are totally prevented from running them or issuing orders, which they would otherwise be able to do from inside the prison if this specific type of regime did not exist.
This is one of the measures that the Mafia considers to be extremely damaging to its interests, so much so that it has been, and still is, one of the main reasons for intimidatory attacks against the institutions, now that the transitional regime established by article 41-bis has been extended by the government for a further two years.
Since July 1982, this regime has been applied to a total of about 800 prisoners, and it currently affects 466 individuals of whom 269 are members of the Sicilian Mafia, 87 of the Neapolitan Camorra, 79 of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta and 31 of the Puglia Mafia.
But there is one fact which, perhaps more than any other, sends out the clearest signal of the effectiveness of the measures undertaken both in general terms of both crime prevention policies, and policing.
The number of the "pentiti", or the collaborators turning State's evidence and co-operating with the investigators and courts, is steadily increasing. There are now 951 "pentiti", 302 of which belong to the Mafia, 153 to the Camorra, 127 to the 'Ndrangheta, 68 to the Puglia Mafia, and 235 to other underworld organisations.
We could go on listing the figures and statistics, and this would merely reinforce the conclusion that I have already drawn: namely, that the measures already taken to fight organised crime are moving in the right direction. There is still a great deal to be done, however, not only in terms of law enforcement, but also to work together more closely with greater solidarity in order to clean up and rehabilitate society.
Here again there is another emblematic statistic: the number of murders in the four Mafia-prone regions during the 5-year period under consideration (1990-94) accounts for an extremely high percentage of the national murder rate (accounting for between 63 per cent to over 70 per cent).
There is nothing particularly unusual about that, but what is perhaps surprising is the fact that in these Mafia-prone regions, the number of what we might call "ordinary" murders accounts for between 20 and 50 per cent of the total murders in these regions.
It is an evident indication that these areas continue to cultivate a tradition of violence, which can be put down to a prevailing 'Mafioso' mentality which still persists among certain sections of the population, whether or not the individuals concerned are Mafia members themselves.
In order to contrast this, we have to work hard, beginning with the school children.
There are therefore many urgent situations connected with this state of affairs, most of which are of purely national relevance such as racketeering and extortion, the increase in illegal money-lending, the reiterated attempts to take control of the municipal authorities, intimidating politicians and the public servants. Then there are the Mafia campaigns, including murder and misinformation, to deter people from turning State's evidence, infiltrating the national economy by money laundering, and serious interference in the labour market and in employment problems in the Mafia-prone regions. By way of example, we might recall the news that was published at the beginning of this month by an Italian press agency, according to which 600 workers in a salt mine in the province of Enna said that they were ready to join the Mafia "where there is always a job" if no-one intervened to help them out of their employment difficulties.
But there are other emergency situations, of supranational relevance, which offer input for debate as I mentioned earlier.
In various quarters it has been emphasised that the Italian Mafia gangs are increasingly working at the international level, not only in the traditional areas of drugs and arms trafficking and laundering increasingly huge volumes of capital, but also in the trade in radioactive and nuclear materials and the illegal immigration market.
With regard to the latter, Italy is particularly exposed to risks, especially after the removal of Europe's internal borders between the countries of the European Union under the Schengen agreement.
Areas that are difficult to control along the Italian coasts, particularly the South-Eastern shores, are targeted as landing points for illegal immigrants. This is at least partially being managed by criminal gangs that until a short time ago were mainly involved in smuggling tobacco, often in collusion with similar foreign gangs.

North Africans, Albanians, Chinese, citizens from the former Yugoslavia and a number of Asian countries are therefore swelling the ranks of undocumented labourers, working as prostitutes and petty criminals. It has quite rightly been pointed out that their appalling living conditions, the lack of any prospect of improvement, the difficulty of integrating with the social fabric of different traditions and cultures, are sufficient reasons to explain why such a large percentage of immigrants are involved in petty drug dealing, stealing, prostitution-related crimes, breaches of the peace and other forms of violence which ever more frequently include murder. Consequently, they are inevitably being subjected to and blackmailed by organised criminal gangs.
Some time ago a leading French newspaper spoke of the way in which the organisations dealing with illegal immigrants and with arms trafficking may have been in touch with Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups, and even though no evidence of this has yet been yielded, we should consider this as a matter of grave concern.
In such emergencies, which extend beyond the concept of defending the community from criminals to take in the broader aspects of national security, it is urgently necessary to find ways of co-operating and acting together in the fields of crime prevention, law enforcement and Intelligence.

CENTRAL DEPARTMENT OF CRIMINAL POLICE
CRIME PREVENTION SERVICE - DIVISION II - STATISTICS OFFICE

STATISTICS ON CRIME IN ITALY
(POPULATION 57,399,108)