‘Stay home you murderer!’: populist policing of COVID-19 in Italy
| DOI | 10.1177/14613557211014913 |
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Author | Vincenzo Scalia |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
‘Stay home you murderer!’: populist
policing of COVID-19 in Italy
Vincenzo Scalia
Department of Applied Social Sciences, Forensics and Politics, University of Winchester, UK
Abstract
Italy was the first European country to experience the impact of COVID-19. In order to deal with the health emergency, in
early March 2020, the Italian government enforced strict lockdown measures. The different Italian police forces, the
Polizia di Stato, Carabinieri and city police forces (Polizia Municipale), patrolled the streets, ensuring that people stayed at
home and non-essential shops remained closed. These police forces received unprecedented support from the public in
enforcing lockdown. People were active in their neighbourhoods, taking pictures of alleged violators and reporting them
to the police, as well as posting pictures of those violating the rules on social networks. Local administrators encouraged
citizens to report lockdown violations and in the case of Rome, introduced an online reporting system. This article focuses
on the policing of lockdown in Italy. The article develops the argument that public attitudes, defined as policing from
below, combined with policing from above by local administrators, produced a populist policing of the lockdown.
Qualitative methodology is us ed to discuss interviews with pol ice officers and analyse newsp aper articles. Populist
political forces are hegemonising in Italy, relying on the feelings of insecurity that the virus has embittered. Populist
hegemony strongly influenced the policing of problems related to COVID. The lack of community policing or plural
policing models within the organisation of Italian police forces, which remain a combination of continental and colonial
models, has been decisive in the development of populist policing. The consequence of this is a type of ‘policing on
demand’, with the public providing the police with intelligence and demanding enforcement.
Keywords
Policing, coronavirus, Italy, reports, populism, organisation
Submitted 19 Jun 2020, Revise received 15 Jan 2021, accepted 12 Apr 2021
Introduction: policing and populism
Italy was the first European country to be seriously
impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. From 7 February
2020, when the first cases were identified in Codogno, near
Milan, the pandemic escalated to the point at which,
throughout March 2020, Italy ranked second after China
in terms of contagion and death toll. Such dramatic and
abrupt spread of the disease caused the Italian government
to hastily approve a decree limiting the movement of citi-
zens (Istituto Cattaneo, 2020).
This article discusses policing of the COVID-19 lock-
down from 8 March to 4 May 2020. First, the public helped
the police forces. Reports of lockdown violations were con-
veyed in a plurality of ways. Alerts sent to the police by
phone were combined with mobile phone pictures or by the
creation of social network pages showing lockdown viola-
tors. Here, we saw direct, mass public participation in poli-
cing activities, based on models combining different
approaches such as policing on demand (Conover and
Liederbach, 2015) and community-oriented policing
(Makin and Marenin, 2017). Mobilisation of the public
spurred on by the moral panic caused by the coronavirus
pandemic helped the process of enforcement by Italian
police forces. Thanks to community intelligence provided
Corresponding author:
Vincenzo Scalia, Reader in Criminology, Department of Applied Soc ial
Sciences, Forensi cs and Politics, Uni versity of Winchest er, Medecroft
Annex 3, Sparkford Road, Winchester SO22 4NR, UK.
Email: Vincenzo.Scalia@winchester.ac.uk
International Journalof
Police Science & Management
ªThe Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14613557211014913
journals.sagepub.com/home/psm
2021, Vol. 23(3) 242–252
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