La stagione delle ordinanze sulla sicurezza. Il punto di vista degli attori coinvolti

The paper aims to contribute to the debate on urban safety measures in Italy by analysing the effects of mayoral ordinances on matters pertaining to security and public order issued in five cities. First, it examines the evolution of urban safety policies in Italy, placing them within the process of renegotiation of powers between the central government and local authorities. Then, it delineates the main futures of the ordinances’ season, started in 2008 with the decree on “urgent measures for security” and put to an end in 2011 by the ruling of the Constitutional Court. In the central part, the paper presents the main results of an empirical research carried out in Bari, Florence, Milan, Padua, Reggio Calabria. Interviews to institutional actors and civil society representatives reveal that the evaluation of ordinances’ effects is highly dependent from the position of the actors in the policy process. The mayors and the local police consider these instruments very useful to reassure the public and to promptly intervene on security matters. On the contrary, many civil society representatives consider the ordinances to have short-lived effects on perceived security and little impact on objective security. In general, a demand for more ordinary, participated and long-term measures on local safety clearly emerges from the study.