Berlusconi calls Italy a sh**ty country which "sickens" him

[Starglider]

You are mistaken.

No! This is impossible! How can Thanas, staunch defender of the euro, unofficial knight of the EU, he who brushed away every suggestion of letting Greece default with 'we must help our brothers' and 'we don't abandon friends who get into difficulty', possibly be suggesting that indefinite bail-outs might be a bad idea? Quick, tell me you're joking before I have a crisis of faith and start voting UK Independence Party.

[Simon_Jester]

Though the Italian government may be thoroughly corrupt, they are not doing too bad with crime. Wiki has their homicide rate at 1.1 per 100k, with a population of almost 61 million it means that last year there were about 667 homicides. Chicago on the other hand according neighborhoodscout.com they have almost one tenth the population of Italy yet over 3/4s of the number of homicides (510).

Even adding the total crimes committed, it is safer to live in Italy (average crime committed is 19.2 per square mile) than Chicago (average number of crimes committed is 738 per square mile). You are about 38 times more likely to fall victim of a crime (15 times more likely to be killed) in Chicago than in Italy overall.

Crime fighting-wise, Chicago is very much dysfunctionally corrupt compared to Italy.

Like Stas said, violent crime and government corruption aren't really related, Enigma.

There are plenty of cities where politicians are less corrupt than Chicago but the murder rate is about as high. When we talk about "corruption," we normally mean government officials who abuse the powers of their office to enrich themselves or their friends, not the question of whether crimes are being committed.

A state has to be very corrupt indeed before that corruption starts seriously impacting the crime rate- i.e. corrupt enough that the police are being bribed to overlook murders.

You've also have to consider the culture of a nation when talking about how corrupt they are.

Broomstick just made this very same point, in a mirror-image way: there are places relatively free of corruption, places where corruption is common but unpopular, and places where corruption is simply taken for granted and people will cheerfully vote in criminals to replace the old criminals.

Each of those three is more corrupt than that last, I'd argue, allowances for local culture or not.

[Stark]

Argue... based on what? Is the population's attitude to corruption more important than the depth, breadth or magnitude of corruption? Why? Even police corrupt enough to 'overlook' murders aren't going to do it for a sixpack, so will it really impact crime rates significantly?

Measuring corruption is a pretty hilarious idea, since if you could measure it, you could probably prosecute it. Indeed, even the definition of corruption in a political sense is probably open to debate.

[darthdavid]

Though the Italian government may be thoroughly corrupt, they are not doing too bad with crime. Wiki has their homicide rate at 1.1 per 100k, with a population of almost 61 million it means that last year there were about 667 homicides. Chicago on the other hand according neighborhoodscout.com they have almost one tenth the population of Italy yet over 3/4s of the number of homicides (510).

Even adding the total crimes committed, it is safer to live in Italy (average crime committed is 19.2 per square mile) than Chicago (average number of crimes committed is 738 per square mile). You are about 38 times more likely to fall victim of a crime (15 times more likely to be killed) in Chicago than in Italy overall.

Crime fighting-wise, Chicago is very much dysfunctionally corrupt compared to Italy.

Then again, even if we compared crime stats between nations alone, Italy still fares better. Hell, overall Italy fares better than Canada. lol. How's that for a dysfunctionally corrupt nation.

You've also have to consider the culture of a nation when talking about how corrupt they are.

As others have said, crime isn't directly related to corruption. Even just looking at crime rates though, it's disingenous to compare Italy to Chicago like that because Chicago is entirely urban and Italy has large rural areas. If one was to do this sort of comparison it would be better to focus on urban areas with a similar population density to Chicago.

[Broomstick]

Ordinary crime and corruption are different things.

True.

In the US (and perhaps elsewhere) the Mafia are notoriously corrupt.... and also well known for maintaining order and safety in the neighborhoods they live. Their methods are sometimes extremely unsavory... but that is a case of corruption and low (violent) crime co-existing.

So... perhaps a fair comparison between entities is whether bribes are common (or even considered business as normal), the amount of election tampering, buying/selling of influence, nepotism, and so forth.

[Big Orange]

You are mistaken.

No! This is impossible! How can Thanas, staunch defender of the euro, unofficial knight of the EU, he who brushed away every suggestion of letting Greece default with 'we must help our brothers' and 'we don't abandon friends who get into difficulty', possibly be suggesting that indefinite bail-outs might be a bad idea? Quick, tell me you're joking before I have a crisis of faith and start voting UK Independence Party.

On that tangent a small town in central Italy, Filettino, has decided to ignore the Euro, declared themselves a principality, and now printing their own bank notes, the Fiorito.

[Teebs]

On that tangent a small town in central Italy, Filettino, has decided to ignore the Euro, declared themselves a principality, and now printing their own bank notes, the Fiorito.

I suspect that that guy has just considerably increased his town's tourism revenues.