Understanding crime trends in Italy and Elsewhere

No one seems to know why crime rates based on official data rose steeply in all developed countries except Japan from the 1960s through the 1990s, or why they have since fallen. Since the fall began, homicide, theft, burglary, and auto theft rates have declined almost everywhere. Patterns appear to differ for robberies, assaults, and sexual offenses, with rates falling in the English-speaking countries and continuing to rise or remaining at high levels in much of continental Europe, including in Italy. Most likely rates for those offenses are also declining and only appear to be rising because of increases in victim reporting and police recording and because of rising thresholds of intolerance of violence which have led to cultural re-characterizations as criminal of behaviors, including domestic violence, sexual aggressiveness, and alcohol-influenced altercations, that in earlier periods were not seen in that way.