Devianza e criminalità in Italia in tempi di pandemia. Alcune riflessioni critiche

The paper focuses its attention on the first lockdown in Italy between March and May 2020. It starts with some questions: how did the population react to the Covid-19 pandemic and the ‘stay at home order’? What effects had the lockdown on crime? As a whole, the population respected the new rules and expressed a feeling of sharing the Covid-19 crisis. The reverse of this collective sentiment was the identification of a new type of deviant, corresponding to those who, with or without the possibility to do otherwise, did not respect the new rules of conduct. The lockdown has led to a significant drop in crime: this particularly happened for predatory crimes, while for others, such as the sale and consumption of drugs, there has not been an equally significant decrease. Some inconsistencies found in the analysis highlight the aporias based on the perspective of routine activities to explain crime.