It is easy to say “security”, it is no coincidence that the word dominates the public debate and the concerns of citizens exacerbated by news events, from Modena to Milan. It is perhaps even quicker to promise it. But achieving it is a complex matter that requires competence and short and long-term strategy. Not only that, the word itself is exposed to a Manichean contrast that evokes clichés of the opposite sign: it is difficult to think about this topic outside the logic of the stadium curve. But Franco Gabrielliwho among many things in his life was chief of police and prefect of Rome, is accustomed to complications from his CV and has decided, starting from his long experience, to try to bring to the table, in collaboration with Carlo Boninia manifesto for democratic security, entitled Against fear (Feltrinelli). Starting from the assumption that fear is a human feeling, which runs through our societies, and which deserves deeper attention and respect than the antithesis of exploitation/removal that politics is used to reserving for it based on colour.
Doctor Gabrielli, how would you define safety?
«Security is not something “for cops”, but a sensitive issue that intercepts the needs of the weakest and most fragile people in society, because it is a precondition of their freedom: in the Univ-Censis report Safety outside the home of May 2025, we read that three out of four Italians believe that in the last five years it has become more dangerous to go around the street and that this conditions their freedom to the point that 38.1% said they had given up going out at least once out of fear, given that it rises to 52.1% among young people. Dismissing all this as “perceived insecurity” risks translating into an underestimation, which makes citizens feel misunderstood and a little betrayed who cannot buy security by wealth, choosing the best neighborhoods, nor have it by status through an escort: a bit like when someone goes to the doctor, describes their symptoms and feels they can be traced back to stress, as a category that includes all the things that cannot be framed in any other way. Not only that, a democratic approach should not propose a fraudulent trade-off between freedom and security.”
At the other extreme, fear is a politically motivated issue, how do we get out of it?
«Fear is a natural feeling that has allowed humanity since prehistoric times to survive the dangers of the world. It becomes pathological on a social level when it is fueled and then proposes apparently simple and saving solutions around which consensus can be obtained. If we pay attention, we are witnessing an alternating role play between those in the Government and those in the opposition from time to time: the former brandish crime statistics; the latter the perception of insecurity, then, when the Government changes, the roles are reversed: yet statistics should not be weapons to brandish but keys to understanding reality, useful for the search for solutions”.
If the right looks to repression, the left calls for prevention: what is the most constructive attitude?
«We would need a “cross-eyed” look, let it be said with respect for those who suffer from this pathology: with one eye we should look far ahead and try to intervene on the causes, with the other look at today and at containing the effects that produce insecurity, knowing that, despite desiring the best preventive medicine possible, surgery remains sometimes necessary.
The current limit is to imagine that it is possible to act on the effects with the sole instrument of the criminal law, increasing the penalties, while the succession of security decrees, after four years, allows us to doubt their saving effectiveness. Security is in fact a theme that intercepts the complexity of our time, acknowledging it does not mean creating an alibi for not addressing the problem, but knowing that it requires an approach made up of a plurality of interventions: from public safety which is the exclusive responsibility of the State, to urban safety (which also involves the usability of places, the fight against degradation, lighting…); from integration to social cohesion, from the prevention of school dropout to mental illness. Today the attitude on these issues is fatalistic. We are all aware that social bombs are hatching – think of unaccompanied minors left to fend for themselves and dumped in the territories – but we limit ourselves to hoping that they don’t explode. Then the events in Modena occur and lead us back to a much more tragic reality than the one we pretended not to see until a few moments before and which cannot be addressed by limiting ourselves to police operations. It would be good not to forget that security is more a relational issue than a matter of public order: it is poorly reconciled with red zones and “desertification”, which should then be manned by a number of people we cannot afford.”
He spoke of integration, perhaps the most complex of bets, the failure of which is often associated with phenomena of youth crime. What is missing?
«If we exclude the meritorious actions of the Catholic Church and the Third Sector and some good initiatives in the area, Italy has not yet lacked an overall policy on integration, starting from the fact that there are no recipes valid for everyone everywhere. In other countries, integration is favored by the fact that people arrive who speak the same language, ours is not widespread in the world, yet this Government has even dismantled the little that was done in the CAS for the teaching of Italian. But if those who arrive do not know the language, they tend to “enclavise” themselves, closing themselves off in the community they belong to in Italy. This is the first form of integration, but it is problematic when it becomes permanent: if there is no exchange with the outside, a tear is created in the social fabric.”
You talk about a “holistic” approach to migration, what does that mean?
«We need to keep together legitimate flows, repatriations which are not in themselves a scandal, and integration. All this is expressed not through exclusion but through a legality that enables, through an integration conceived not as an act of generosity but as an infrastructure: a strategic investment, which implies resources, long-term vision and intelligent control. I believe that the objective we should pursue is not the protection of an Italian identity yet to be defined, but the construction of a civic identity, which has the first 54 articles of the Constitution as its foundation, as a shared heritage, around which to unite.”
How to get there, while the gangmaster produces Amendolara cases?
«We are experiencing great contradictions: on the one hand we hear a lot about repatriations and remigration, things that are easy to promise but difficult to keep, also because they presuppose agreements with the countries of origin that are not easy to obtain; while on the other hand a flow decree is made for 450 thousand new arrivals in three years: the doubt arises in my mind that there is an unspeakable afterthought, perhaps more widespread than one imagines, which sees immigrants as a sort of new slavery: since the population is aging, it is fine for them to do the jobs we no longer want to do, to pick vegetables, to be caregivers, as long as they don’t bother us and don’t claim rights. Nobody, among other things, admits that only 40% of irregulars arrive by boat and that arrivals by sea have an impact much more than Italian policies on the balance of the countries of embarkation, Tunisia and Libya in particular”.
We associate security with public order, when can we say that its management works?
«Public order is the framework that allows the coexistence of different rights: a demonstration is successful when no one gets hurt, shop windows are saved, violent people are isolated, and the right to express peaceful dissent is safeguarded. It is something that is achieved with common sense, proportion, the ability to weave paths that precede the event: in all this, an overly rigid set of tools, all based on criminal law, risks exacerbating conflicts, reducing the spaces for mediation and having the opposite effect, increasing the insecurity of the square”.
