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Convict tour guides

If you’re considering going to Naples anytime soon, there are new tour guides in the city to help ensure you don’t get robbed. Whether you will want their help is another matter, as these tour guides are actually former convicts. The powers-that-be (the EU and Campania local government) believe that their new tour guides will be able to help tourists ensure that they are not pick pocketed in the Mafia influenced area. Around 70 former convicts have been recruited, each wearing a fluorescent jacket and carrying an ID card (just so you can make sure that they are a former convict and not a current one!). But the local tourism commission is not entirely convinced by the “people skills” of the former convicts. Apparently some tourists have already complained about the manners of their new guides. And the former convicts recently went on strike when a guide was taken away by the police after having an argument with a traffic warden. But as Pietro Ioia, from an association for released prisoners, points out, “Campania needs to give them work before the Camorra (local Mafia) does”. I suppose that this is a good idea, as long as you don’t expect too many niceties, as who knows crime better than an ex-convict?

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