Convictions of felony by final judgement

Criminal law sanctions illicit behaviours according to their seriousness and connotes them as felonies or as misdemeanors: the formers are the most serious ones.

The number of convictions of felony represents an important aspect of the complex phenomenon of criminality. The focal information is highly linked to the Judicial Authorities activity, representing the final output of their work. The informative potential is, indeed, less linked to the incidence of the criminality than other sources of measurement of the criminality are, such as, for example, the reports to Police Statistics.

A sentence may regard one or more felonies and/or one or more misdemeanors.
Data about sentences here presented are assimilated to the persons convicted. In most of the cases, indeed, one judgement of conviction corresponds to one author, and only in a little number of cases more judgements of conviction correspond to one individual only, with an estimated percentage lower than 10%.

Persons convicted of felony in 2009 were 257.282, slightly lower than the previous year (-1,5%, they were 261.249 in 2008).

Considering the persons convicted of the most serious felony, the largest number was of theft (29.491 in 2009 – in sharp decrease from 2008 when they were 35.327), violations of rules about drugs (28.722 persons convicted) money laundering and receiving of stolen goods (20.008), violations of rules about immigration (18.351 persons convicted in 2009, in slight decrease from 2008 when they were 20.539).

The survey, described in a short introductory note, concerns the totality of the persons convicted by final judgement of the most serious felony committed, and a focus on minors convicted is offered, together with an overall picture of all the felonies involved in final judgements.

The Italian geographical areas in the tables include the following regions: North-West: Piemonte, Val d’Aosta, Lombardia, Liguria; North-East: Trentino – Alto Adige, Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Emilia Romagna; Centre: Toscana, Umbria, Marche, Lazio; South: Abruzzo, Molise, Campania, Puglia, Basilicata, Calabria; Islands: Sicilia, Sardegna.

For information

Criminality, violence against women, justice

Isabella Corazziari
tel. 06 4673.7246
email corazzia@istat.it