Country

Justice and public safety in Italy

Italy is a regionalised unitary, civil-law republic — a "Regional State" with five special-autonomy regions — but its justice functions are all national: even the autonomous regions hold no competence over the courts, prosecution, national police or prisons. Its prosecutors are magistrates within the independent judiciary, with a constitutional duty to prosecute, and it has three top courts plus a dedicated Constitutional Court.

Fact-checkedSafety review clearedLast updated 26 July 2026Last reviewed 26 July 2026

Institutional facts on these pages were checked against their sources on 26 July 2026. Where a cited provision carries a scheduled change, the page states the date.

Italy is a regionalised unitary state — a "Regional State" — with a civil-law legal tradition, governed by the Constitution of the Italian Republic of 1948. Under Article 101, justice is administered in the name of the people and the members of the judiciary are subject only to the law.

Analysis

Twenty regions, five autonomous — but justice is entirely national

Italy has twenty regions, five of which (Sicily, Sardinia, Trentino-Alto Adige/South Tyrol, Aosta Valley and Friuli-Venezia Giulia) have special autonomy under Article 116. It is tempting to expect some of that autonomy to reach the justice system — but it does not. Article 117 reserves to the State, as exclusive competences, "jurisdiction and procedural law; civil and criminal law; administrative justice" and "public order and security". Even the most that Article 116 allows a region over "justice" is the administrative organisation of the lay Justices of the Peace. So the courts, the prosecution, the national police and the prisons are all national — the exact opposite of Finland's Åland, which does run its own policing.

The system runs through several national bodies. Multiple police forces — the Polizia di Stato, the Arma dei Carabinieri and the Guardia di Finanza — police the country under the coordination of the Interior Ministry. The Pubblico Ministero prosecutes and directs the judicial police. The ordinary courts run up to the Court of Cassation, alongside a separate Constitutional Court and a separate supreme administrative court. And the Department of Prison Administration runs the prisons.

Jurisdictions modelled

A territory can exist administratively without being a separate legal jurisdiction. This table records, for each modelled tier and territory, whether it has its own arrangement for a function, whether the function is organised nationally, or whether we have simply not researched it.

Functional scope of each modelled Italy jurisdiction
Jurisdiction	Level	Courts	Prosecution	Policing
Italy	country	own	own	own

unknown means not researched. It is never a synonym for none: an unresearched territory does not inherit the metropolitan arrangement.

What has not been researched

These areas have no page. That is a statement about our research, not about Italy: each of these institutions exists, and we have simply not established enough from primary sources to write about it responsibly.

Forensic systemNot researched: The organisation of forensic science in Italy (the scientific police services of the several forces and the medico-legal institutes) has not been read to the standard required, and forensics is a safety-sensitive section where an under-sourced description is specifically forbidden.
Border and customsNot researched: Border and customs in Italy involve the Polizia di Stato's border police, the Guardia di Finanza, the Customs Agency, the Schengen and EU customs context, and Italy's central-Mediterranean maritime frontier, and could not be researched to the standard required here.
Institutional historyNot researched: Italian institutional history — unification, the Fascist period and the codes it left, the 1948 republican Constitution, and the development of the anti-mafia institutions — cannot be written responsibly from general knowledge and requires scholarly and archival sources not consulted here.
Institutional timelineNot researched: A timeline requires each milestone to carry its own verified source and date. The dated facts established in this pilot — the 1948 Constitution, Law 121/1981 on the police, Law 395/1990 creating the DAP, and the 2025 publication of the proposed judicial-careers reform — are a start, but a responsible timeline needs primary sources for each milestone, which were not assembled here.

Sources

Constitution of the Italian Republic (1948) — official English translation
Corte costituzionale (Constitutional Court of the Italian Republic) · Legislation · 1948 · link verified 2026-07-26
The Constitutional Court's own official English translation (October 2023 edition), fetched as a PDF and text-extracted (confirmed by the research and verification passes; the Senate's English PDF was bot-walled, so this Court edition was substituted). Supports Art. 101 (justice administered in the name of the people; the judiciary subject only to the law), Art. 104 (the judiciary an independent branch; the High Council of the Judiciary/CSM), Art. 107 (the public prosecutor's guarantees), Art. 109 ("judicial authorities may directly avail themselves of the judicial police"), Art. 112 ("the public prosecutor shall have the obligation to initiate criminal proceedings" — mandatory prosecution), Art. 103 (the Council of State and administrative justice), Art. 116 (the five special-autonomy regions, with additional devolution over "justice" limited to the organizational requirements of the Justice of the Peace), Art. 117(2) — subparagraphs (l) "jurisdiction and procedural law; civil and criminal law; administrative justice", (h) "public order and security, save for local administrative police", (d) defence — establishing that all four justice functions are EXCLUSIVE State competence, and Arts. 134–135 (the Constitutional Court).
National ordinary courts — Italy (European e-Justice Portal)
European Commission (European e-Justice Portal) · International organisation · link verified 2026-07-26
The European Commission's e-Justice portal page on Italy's ordinary courts, read directly. Supports the ordinary hierarchy — justices of the peace (giudice di pace), tribunals (tribunale), courts of appeal (corte d'appello) — and that "the Court of Cassation (Corte di Cassazione or Corte Suprema di Cassazione) … is the supreme court in the judicial system".