Italy’s Guardia di Finanza: policing financial crime and domestic security in a changing world

Purpose - This paper aims to examine the many unusual roles played by the Italian Guardia di Finanza (GdF), and how that unique blend of missions sometimes overlaps as much with conceptions of domestic security as it does with the policing of financial crimes. Design/methodology/approach - This paper analyzes the agency's historical organization and evolution, legal authorities and changing missions. It uses publicly available government documents and secondary analysis. Findings - This organization, for historical reasons, was an early version of a hybrid agency that conducted both crime control and national protective missions – policing economic crime, patrolling borders and coasts and attempting to regulate the flows of goods and people into and out of the Italian state. Research limitations/implications - This analysis uses data collected from annual reports of the Guardia di Finanza, as well as journalistic reporting and scholarly analysis, to assess the changing agency, but it does not use internal sources or direct observation, which could inform future related analyses. Practical implications - GdF’s unique set of undertakings is particularly relevant as the comparative policing and financial crime literatures grow, and particularly as they continue to overlap with the broader comparative security literature. Social implications - Policing, and police reform, has been very high profile in recent years, and will continue to be. The unusual structure of Italian policing, and the GdF in particular, have insights that could inform other nations police and policing. Originality/value - This analysis is designed to describe an unusual case – of financial policing, of policing in general, and of domestic security policy – and illustrating how those issues overlap and relate. National police agencies often have missions that evolve over time, and this is a case study in such evolution.