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Francesco Sidoti, Istituzioni e criminalità. 2nd edition. Milan: CEDAM, 1997 orig. pub. in 1996. Pp. xvii, 398. L 45,000.

Francesco Sidoti has written a book of large ambition which to a great extent is fulfilled. He seeks 

to identify the characteristics and causes of “criminalità all’italiana” during the last thirty years within 

two broad contexts (p. ix). First, he looks to the venerable tradition of theorists in the social sciences, 

offering a careful and scholarly reading of Durkheim, Weber, Popper, and Dahrendorf. By arguing that 

each of these theorists, often considered contradictory, offers components of a multicausal theory of 

crime, Sidoti’s work is in some ways comparable to David Garland’s superb book, Punishment and 

Modern  Society: A Study in Social  Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). Secondly, 

he places the Italian statistics and debates about crime within an international context, citing the experiences of France, Japan, and the United States as foils for the unique developments in 

contemporary Italy.

            From the array of social theorists cited, Sidoti constructs a theoretical   approach most 

indebted to the “new institutionalism” (p. 3). From his perspective, crime like all human behavior is 

rational; individuals do a cost-benefit analysis of reward/punishment before breaking the law. For 

Sidoti, the most important component in this equation is provided by institutions, whether in their 

positive role in preventing crime (like youth centers) or their deterrent role (like prisons). As 

institutions embody cultural values, they must function efficiently and impartially in order to be 

trusted by honest citizens and feared by criminals. Such reasoning is not new, and Sidoti admits 

his debt to Cesare Beccaria whose famous Enlightenment tract, Dei delitti e delle pene, was 

originally published in 1764.

What is more controversial is Sidoti’s application of this perspective to Italian history since the 

Second World War. In his view, 1968 was “uno spartiacque” that set Italy on a track away from 

the common Western patterns of crime (p. 14). Based on official statistics and yearly reports of 

prosecuting magistrates for each province, Sidoti demonstrates that crime was falling in Italy 

through the 1950s and 1960s as in the rest of Europe and the United States. Organized crime, 

including the typical tactics of the mafia like kidnapping, was not widespread or a concern to 

prosecutors. After 1968, however, rates of lawbreaking skyrocketed and organized crime began 

to strangle the South. Declaring that the problem of crime in Italy is largely an aspect of the 

Southern question, Sidoti devotes much of his book to exploring institutional and cultural 

weaknesses in the South which favored the explosion of illegality.

Those who initiated the explosion, however, were not southerners but Leftist (and presumably 

northern) intellectuals who turned the revolts of 1968 into an perpetual struggle for the 

democratization of Italian institutions, most notably prisons. While the radical protest of 1968 

sensibly disappeared after a short time in other Western nations, the ‘chronically discontented” 

Italian intellectual --nurtured on the writings of Michel Foucau1t-- continued to call for the 

dismantling of public institutions (p. 328). Such pressure led to laws weakening the power of 

police and prosecutors to repress crime and eliminating the threat of prison for many offenders, 

who were either amnestied or diverted to alternative community service. Most dangerously, the 

Left demonized the police and excused violence against the state, creating a cultural climate 

which encouraged not only political, but also organized and common crime.

Such a permissive atmosphere fueled a “svolta” in the South after 1968 where crime rates soared

(p. 212). Democratization and decentralization of social services and punishment could be successful

only where community institutions could take over tasks previously controlled by the central state. 

Citing Robert Putnam among others, Sidoti argues that the South lacked a historical tradition of 

strong local institutions, so that its cities failed to establish programs to absorb lawbreakers, most 

notably youth, who were diverted from incarceration.

Political parties stepped into this power vacuum and destroyed the “collective morality” of the South,

using democratization as an excuse for introducing partitocrazia and corruption into local affairs

(p. 238).

Sidoti’s analysis is innovative and useful in several ways. Despite citing Filippo Turati’s famous 

declaration from over a century ago that Italy held a sad primacy in crime among European nations,

which implies that the problem is eternal, he shows that in fact this was not true. That patterns and 

levels of lawbreaking in the South during the 1950s and 1960s resembled those of the North and 

therefore Europe disproves any deterministic view that the South has always been and will always

be a crime-ridden society. In fact, al the end of bis analysis he declares that “the State has finally 

won the war against the mafia” (p. 318). Furthermore, organized crime has become so multi-cultural 

that what remains of the traditional Italian mafia no longer has hegemony nationally or internationally.

Sidoti also offers an important re-evaluation of the judiciary during the 1970s and 1980s. Basing much

of his analysis on the yearly reports of prosecuting magistrates, he finds in them a variety of opinion

about the radical political movements after 1968. Some prosecutors were sympathetic to Leftist calls

for democratization of institutions and the de­institutionalization of punishment, while others 

opposed change from a healthy understanding of the threat of organized crime rather than from 

unexamined conservatism. During a period when magistrates have attained a certain heroic 

stature for their courageous initiatives in both the anti-mafia and Mani pulite investigations, 

it is certainly appropriate to re-examine the role of the judiciary in the aftermath of 1968 with more sensitivity not only to its internal diversity, but also its diffìcult position as a target of terrorism. Sidoti convincingly defends his heavy reliance on the magistrates reports, since he sees them not 

as ideological documents of the state but honest compilations of information from a variety of 

local criminal justice agencies. 

I would agree that the reports are valuable primary sources, although I wish he had made clearer 

how representative each report was from which he quotes.

Other aspects of Sidoti’s book are more troubling. Although the author claims to hold no party card

and sees himself in “the vital center,” he displays more of an animus toward the Left than the Right 

(p. xiii). He blames the Left for condoning violence after 1968, but surely that was true only of some

groups on the extra­parliamentary Left and equally true of the extreme Right. It seems farfetched 

to blame the flower children of 1968 for sparking an explosion of crime in the South, as mafìosi are

not particularly Leftist or intellectual. Sidoti hardly mentions the DC, but this was the party most 

responsible for ruining Southern local institutions through patronage and partitocrazia rather than 

the relatively unpopular PCI. Organized crime certainly exploited this weakness, but more inspired 

by the profits to be made in the international drug trade than by writings of Leftist intellectuals.

I would also question Sidoti’s seemingly blanket approval of strong institutions. From a historical 

point of view, institutions of the centralized Italian state have often acted quite repressively toward 

citizens, especially subordinate groups like women, children, and Southerners. Sidoti is quite right 

to harangue the judicial system for its enormous backlog of cases; as a result, over fifty percent 

of the incarcerated are only awaiting trial rather than actually serving a sentence. But he must be 

more clear about which institutions need strengthening and how. His denunciation of 

democratization seems to favor central over local institutions, a view that seems wrongheaded 

in the historical context not only of fascism, but the preceding liberal monarchy which was also characterized by a centralized criminal justice system little concerned about individual liberties.

Or does he favor local control in the North but  not in the South, where he believes the institutional 

legacy is weak? Such an approach seems patently unfair and paternalistic.

Sidoti needs to support bis assertion that common crime, including juvenile delinquency, is closely 

related to organized crime. That rates of both common and organized crime skyrocketed in the 

South after 1968 might be coincidental or attributable to entirely different causes. As the mafia 

increasing turned its attention to the highly profitable international trade in drugs, what interest did

 it have in petty larceny? Did not economic factors - like unempIoyment - fuel juvenile crime more 

than radical political ideas, probably little understood by undereducated high-school dropouts in the

 South? Although Sidoti mentions the economic downturn of the 1980s, he instead emphasizes the 

erosion of institutions and morality by Leftist intellectuals, the mafia, and the partitocrazia. The 

issue of the relation between political, organized, and common crime is extremely important, but

 Sidoti fails to document adequately the links among them.

Finally, while I applaud the attempt to put Italy in an international context, I find the book’s overview

 of criminal justice policies in other nations rather superficial. Sidoti seems uncritically enthusiastic

 about President Clinton’s “law and order” initiatives, such as limiting the right of appeal for inmates 

on death row. He also relies heavily on the theories of James Q. Wilson, a conservative 

criminologist. In neither case does the book convey the controversies surrounding Clinton’s crime

 policies or Wilsons views, but presents them as mainstream. The implication seems to be that Italy

 needs more severe punishment, particularly more incarceration. While this may be true for some categories of criminals, history has shown that imprisonment does not work either to solve social 

problems or to rehabilitate criminals. Sidoti is correct that trials in Italy need to be more efficient and predictable, but he needs 

to offer a more nuanced prediction of what punishment should look like in the future.

Despite these reservations, I would highly recommend this book to not only criminologists but 

sociologists in general. The richness of the analysis will provoke questions from many readers, 

but Sidoti has produced a book worthy of taking its piace in the growing international bibliography 

on the problem of crime.

Mary Gibson,

The volume is divided into two parts, each containing three chapters. The first part deals with general themes. The second part examines Italian issues. Each chapter is the revised, and often enlarged, version of essays previously published in journals or presented at conferences. Sidoti does not develop a single argument but weaves an intricate, and intriguing, web of themes which together make a compelling case for the need to take security and intelligence issues seriously.

Chapter 1 deals with a number of themes which include a painstaking etymological analysis of the term intelligence (defined as “la capacità di discernere ciò che vale raccogliere da ciò che deve essere buttato via” p.18), the meaning and value of security, and the difficulties of measuring success in intelligence. It also offers a normative plaidoyer in favor of seizing the historical opportunity provided by the end of the cold war to re-think security and re-found intelligence on new bases. During the cold war intelligence was regarded internationally as an aspect of the East-West struggle and domestically as a means to neutralize and repress groups identified, rightly or wrongly, with the other camp. The end of the cold war, Sidoti argues offers the “possibilità di ricominciare da capo” (p. 27). The problems of security and the needs for intelligence have not disappeared. If anything, they bave become more complex, as evidenced, for instance, by the current debate on the evolution of NATO. Threats now come not from a specific political camp but from many directions: terrorist groups, organized crime, clandestine immigration, industrial espionage, ecological disasters, etc. This re-foundation should pay particular attention to the relationship intelligence has with political power. Intelligence services cannot obviously be neutral but can be impartial and have to be legal and responsible.

Chapters 2 and 3 retrace the evolution of the concept as well as the practice of intelligence. Sidoti argues that intelligence is not “un’attività amorale” by placing it within the intellectual context of Western liberalism and relating it to the value of freedom in particular: (“... la libertà è un fine che va perseguito all’interno di una costellazione di valori, ... [e] che va coordinato alle necessità di sicurezza” p. 68). He distinguishes espionage (“traffico di informazioni riservate”) from intelligence (“l’attività di interpretazione delle informazioni relative alla sicurezza” p. 83) and examines the epistemological and cognitive challenges connected with such an activity.

The second part of the book deals with a number of Italian “vices.” Chapter 4 discusses the role that “la cultura del sospetto” plays in Italian justice, politics, journalism, as well as the collective psyche. For Sidoti, “il sospetto” is one of the shortcuts to which people resort when confronted with too much information and encountering difficulties in interpreting it. Chapter 5 (entitled “I mandanti dei mandanti”) begins with a discussion of the notion of “cause” as it relates to crime, and hence of “responsibility” in juridical and political terms. These notions are then used to offer a provocative reflection on the way Italians bave traditionally dealt with the relationship between the “mafia” and politics.

Chapter 5 (entitled “Governo invisibile e malgoverno visibile”) examines what Sidoti calls “la scuola complottista” i.e. the tendency to regard various secret services as having played a central role in the darkest pages of Italian post-war politics. Particularly well aimed in this context is Sidoti’s painstaking criticism of some pages of Pasolini (as well as by Bobbio and Giorgio Galli) who excelled in popularizing explanations of the so-called “strategia della tensione” based not on “prove or indizi” but exclusively on his “prophetic capacities” as an intellectual (p. 208). “In breve” - Sidoti concludes - “continuiamo a procedere nel buio fitto. Ma lacerato da un’allucinante scoppiettare di fuochi d’artificio stupefacenti ma anche inquietanti” (p. 231).

A laudable trait of this volume is its attempt to place the discussion within concrete policy situations. Sidoti’s plaidoyer for a renewed interest in security, particularly in a country such as Italy that has been a consumer more than a producer of this collective good, is placed, for instance, within the context of the debate on the question of the sustainability of the role of the United States as world policeman. The author, moreover, is not reluctant to take position on these issues:

“... dopo la scomparsa dell’Unione Sovietica, come unico superstite in un mondo sempre più difficile da governare, gli americani sono davanti ad un compito storico che possono sostenere soltanto se riescono a mantenere una rete di rapporti sistematici di collaborazione e di sostegno. ... Ancora oggi una intelligence globale viene assicurata dagli americani, soprattutto insieme a inglesi e canadesi, che hanno affrontato le grandi emergenze sull’intero scacchiere mondiale, ma non possono continuare da soli a sostenere responsabilità crescenti e spesso imbarazzanti. ... quali paesi perderebbero di più da un disimpegno americano? Probabilmente tutti, inclusi gli stessi americani che comunque (come è avvenuto nei precedenti conflitti mondiali) prima o poi sarebbero costretti ad intervenire” (p. 137).

Some readers might not agree with this evaluation. To refute it, however, requires careful thinking and, above all, the development of policy alternatives, two things that the Italian government has not done, for instance, in the case of its condemnation of the recent Anglo-American bombing of Iraq.

Sidoti’s approach to bis theme as well as bis writing style (with the only exception of an awkward sentence on pp. 33-34) are enthralling. One does not often come across a book on security that devotes entire pages to the analysis of two paintings by Rembrandt (pp. 38-39), a discussion of the concept of security in Orazio Flacco’s philosophy (pp. 40-41) and acute remarks on novels and films dealing with security and intelligence.

My only criticism is really only a suggestion that the author might wish to retain when preparing a new edition of this volume or a new volume on the same theme. A discerning academic reader who would like to savor the introduction and conclusions of a book and of its individual chapters before sampling. The volume demands total commitment. A more systematic treatment (meaning a clear initial outline of the issues dealt with in each chapter as well as a final summary of the conclusions reached) could make the reading less pleasurable and captivating but would contribute to make the arguments presented more immediate. They certainly deserve careful scrutiny and the widest possible dissemination.

Osvaldo Croci

Department of Political Science

Laurentian University