Crime in Vatican City

Vatican City is the smallest independent state in the world. In this you may find the papal residence and the Roman Catholic’s biggest church. Therefore the Vatican City is considered to be among the holiest places in the world. Paradoxically, the crime level is not as low as you may think.

Despite being a holy place, there are several factors that contribute to the high rates of crime within Vatican City. The first of these factors is the large number of tourists in the city. Vatican City is a place with thousands of tourists’ attractions and millions of people from all over the world can be found touring the city annually. Some people are using this to take advantage to commit crimes by pickpocketing the tourists and even committing sex crimes.

There are reports which have named Vatican City as the city with the highest crime rate in the world. This report is rather bogus and we'll tell you why: the Vatican City does not have the highest number of crimes in the world but it has the highest crime rate. This is as a result of the comparison between the crimes committed and the tiny number of people living in the city. The city is small in area and has a small population too.

Some people have argued that the reason as to why the rate of crime In the Vatican City is high is because the city does not have a long-term prison. This means that criminals arrested while committing crimes cannot be put imprisoned properly. The Majority of the convictions result in fines instead of confinement and therefore this is seen as a loophole that permits offenders to commit crimes without proper punishment.

Vatican City is a small country with few people and that is why it has no well-established jail. It only has one jail which is located near St. Peter’s Basilica. This jail is meant to be used for pretrial detention but instead it is more often used to store equipment rather than criminals.

Basically, the judicial system of Vatican City is poor and in most cases, the pope allows the Italian courts to deal with violent crimes that take place in Vatican City. Despite the fact that Vatican City is a holy place to be, it has been ranked the top in terms of crime rate. Most of them target the tourists who visit the city. Therefore the next time you visit Vatican City, you need to be very careful as pickpocketing, purse-snatching are very rampant in museums, streets, hotels and even in buses.

The popes have tried to come up with measures to fight the increased crime rate in Vatican City by strengthening the judiciary system but it is still a major challenge to this great and holy city. Every year the Vatican publishes its crime statistics and the rate is still very high every year. Violent Crimes are much rarer but still in existence; there was an attempt to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981 and a Swiss Guard was killed in 1998.