Intolerable violence

Women commit less crime, but they are the majority of the victims. This is photographed by Censis in the Report on the social situation of the country, 2021. The data on crime are evident, in 2020, a year strongly conditioned by the pandemic and in where crimes have decreased, the women reported and arrested were just over 140 thousand (less than 18% of the total). Among them, the percentage of prisoners is even lower. At the end of 2020 there were 2,255, equal to 4.2% of the men present in the prisons in the same period. The crime most declined to women is exploitation and aiding and abetting prostitution (over 30%), followed by beatings, scams and computer fraud, theft. 22% of the alleged perpetrators of the murders are women. The data confirm that while women who commit crimes are a minority, the same analyzes show that they are much more numerous (over 40%) as victims of crime.

The female universe is the subject of crimes defined as "gender". The most common are sexual violence, stalking, revenge porn, up to feminicides. These are criminal actions that take place for the most part within the domestic - family sphere. They have as "protagonists" cohabitants, spouses, former partners or acquaintances who do not accept the end of a relationship or the request for greater autonomy from women. In the long months of the pandemic, on the one hand, complaints have decreased, but the numbers of victims have not decreased. In 2020, 116 women were killed, among them 99 lost their lives in the family or emotional sphere, 67 directly from the hands of their partner or an ex. Censis again recorded that in the first nine months of last year this tragic statistic increased with another 91 names (among them 78 killed in the family and 54 by their partner or their ex).

In the period of Covid for many, too many women, the fear was not only linked to the virus.
In 2020, calls and requests for help to the toll-free number 1522 were almost 32 thousand, just under 50% more than the previous year. Among the requests, over 11 thousand were from victims of violence, about 1,400 for stalking. The Censis research stops in the first three months of 2021, and unfortunately confirms the growth trend of violence against women, in the first quarter of the year, complaints increased by another 38% compared to the same period of the previous year.
At home and outside the home, fear and violence to death still accompany women too much, it is no longer tolerable.


Chiara Genisio
NP March 2022