The State Police is at present divided into proximity police. The new concept is a result of the new way of interpreting the term safety. All the phenomena coinciding directly and indirectly with social tranquillity are included in the new acceptance of the term.

The concept of safety is ample and safety is not limited only to the persecution of relevant penal factsbut also includes manifestations of a different nature which have effect on the social tranquillity and on the perception itself of safety.

The State Police therefore pays attention to safety differently and also considers the perceived safety. Nit is not only criminality, the organised one, which worries the Police Forces but also how the citizen perceives the state of unease for which there is not always a penal sanction.

At this point, space must be made for a plural formulation of safety and even participated safety is being talked about. All subjects, public and private, must intervene to ensure citizens’ tranquillity and so collaboration plans are being started up where all the actors of the scene are involved so that everyone can contribute to identifying the objectives, choose the instruments, program initiatives and verify results.

This formulation creates a situation where in the centre of the scene we have the main actor that is the citizen. It is the citizen and his needs which are of interest and we have to look at him to understand what his real life is.

The concept of Proximity Police comes forward at this point. The Proximity Police, before being an operative method is a philosophy; it is a mentality which aims at consolidating the feeling of trust with the citizen. All the operators of the Police Forces must inspire their work to this philosophy. The neighbourhood policeman is a concrete example of this new way of communicating with the citizen, with this desire for inter-exchange, receive advice on how to orientate an action. In fact, the neighbourhood policeman acts and operates in a city neighbour-hood and he is always the same figure the same person every day who gets moving, goes around and knows the shopmen and citizens, is close to all the inhabitants of the neighbourhood and, above all, takes care to the weaker stratas such as old people and minors.

One of the important themes today is the phenomenon of fraud perpetrated on old people, which seems to have acquired a new virulence. The possibility of preventing this kind of offence is rather difficult because it is a question of offences committed, for the most part of the cases, inside the walls of the house.

Consequently, the most efficient instrument, in addition obviously to repression, is communication. We have to convince the old person to adhere to some small rules, small good habits which, if respected, will help him live serenely.

This is the social sensitisation campaign which the Milan Chief of Police and all the departments put into effect from June to September, 2004 in collaboration with the Social Secretariat of RAI (Italian Public Television Network). This campaign realised with televideo pages, publicity spots, famous testimonials close to the weaker groups, communicated and indicated some small rules to respect in order to live more serenely and ended up with the distribution of a sort of handbook of behaviour handed out through the services agencies producing it.

The strategies the police activate are always more concrete such as the system for domicile denunciation, for example, in favour not only of old people but also for victimised of other types of crimes such as sexual violence. The state police has been carrying out this system for a long time for those subjects who call the emergency number 113 and manifest their objective impossibility to go to the police station to file a claim. A flying squad car, with an operator equipped with a computer, goes to the home of the person and collects the clain  in thus way avoiding old people the burden of having to go to the police station to make the claim in addition to the gravity of the crime: The same thing happens for victims of sexual crimes.

This is a very important initiative which has registered a really wide appreciation from the population in general.

The state police have, moreover, started up a Minors Office which, in collaboration with relatives, the Province and the City Council, helps minors, whether foreigners or Italians and offers all the kinds of assistance required as well as pursuing the various crimes and denouncing all the forms of family maltreatment.

In addition, further projects for improving the citizen services have been arranged so as to always be closer to him, such as the Call Center Service, a Vocal Post-box, Mini Mobile Offices of the Neighbourhood Police in the zones of the city, especially for the Summer periods when the majority of the crimes such a thefts and bag-snatching take place.

From  Codini Gabriele, Guarnieri Roberto, Bossolasco Rosanna, Galli Susanna, Pavan Simonetta, Bonora Susanna, Antarelli Daniela, Donisetti Laura, Signorino Laura, Adorni Fulvio. “ELDERLY PEOPLE, WOMEN AND CHILDREN VICTIMS OF CRIME, COMPARISON AND EXCHANGE OF EUROPEAN EXPERIENCES”, Provincia di Milano , Laboratorio Salute Sociale, Network Europeo sulle vittime del crimine 2004