Validity and efficacy of crime perception by families as a crime indicator: A study on Italian statistics.

Despite that official data about crime in Italy (yearly provided by Authorities) describe a downward trend, the population’s perception on this issue seems to be much less optimistic, outlining a country where the citizens feel less and less safe and less confident in the protection offered by the judicial system. In the last years such perception induced many modifications in social behaviours (also in terms of electoral outcomes), but its relationship with the actual crime dynamics is unclear, maybe only due to information bias. Furtherly, a commonly held view is that the justice system in Italy is busy, chaotic and rather poorly administered. In this communication, several statistical methodologies are used in order to evaluate whether and how the objective dynamics of the main crimes can influence the subjective perception of safety and legality; the same analysis is carried out about justice procedures on crimes (described as suggested in Cook and Johnson 1981, Wilodhorn and Wilodhorn 1977). In this way, perhaps some ameliorative intervention could be identified, including legislative measures and/or administrative processes enhancements (Sciacca, 2007). At the same time, this analysis provides an interesting frame of the cross-dynamics among the main crimes and the crime justice indicators, and tries to determine whether the subjective perception of safety and legality (considered as a cross outcome of crime dynamics and justice results) can be used as a proxy to evaluate the effectiveness of justice.