The four kids who committed the enormity of stealing a car and guideing her until they lose control, overwhelming and killing a woman who passed on the sidewalk of the Gratosoglio district south of Milan, They are under 14 years old, the minimum age to be considered responsible for their actions.
The police after reconstructing the road murder, admitted by the 13 -year -old driving, have families with an eye, and when they intercepted the escape from the Roma camp in which they lived rapidly emptied, they applied the administrative rule that allows you to place the boys in the communities by subtracting them from the families, three out of four have already been traced. When the minor is morally or materially abandoned or is exposed, in the family environment, to serious prejudice and danger for its psychophysical safety, in fact the public authority, by means of the child protection bodies, can place it at its protection in a safe place, until it can be definitively providing for its protection.
Ciro Cascone is a long -term magistrate, before going to the Court of Appeal in Bologna he was for twenty years to the prosecutor for minors in Milan who also led for a long time as the last Milanese assignmentknows well the context of the city and the culture land of the boys who commit crimes.
Dr. Cascone, the first thing a reader wonders, in front of the four kids of Gratosoglio who were disappearing with families, is: could they not be stopped immediately, when it was understood that they were driving the car that caused the fatal accident?
«The first thing to say is that clearly these guys are not attributable, having not turned 14 and therefore they cannot be subjected to any criminal, precautionary measure. The civil tools remain: an administrative re -educational procedure can be used which is also foreseen precisely for the non -attributable that commit a crime and which also allows the removal from the family and the placement in a community. An act that does not compete with the judicial authority but that can make social services, the Municipality, the carabinieri if necessary “.
Couldn’t it be done immediately, given the context of degradation that emerged?
“The problem is that in making this tool, regulated by article 403 of the civil code, modified last year, less generic and more guaranteed, it has been made even more rigid and cumbersome, with a more complex procedure, less suitable for responding to limit emergencies such as the one we are talking about. The collateral risk is that this rigidity ends up protecting more adults, parents, than children. After the case Bibiano then there is more fear to take responsibility for moving away a child ».
These are the cases in which the proposal to lower the attributable age is reappeared …
“Attention to the emotion of the moment: the imputability at 14 is a bulwark of civilizations, which for another dates back to Italy to 1930, to the Rocco code not suspicious of being a” goodist “code. Every now and then I hear “but the guys today are ahead”. ATTENTION: being more unscrupulous does not mean being more mature or having more ability to understand and want when acting. It is not that if I lowered the age attributable suddenly resolves the problem of the boys who commit crimes, today after the Caivano decree the minorli prisons also burst, and the prison context often risks becoming a criminal school. If anything in cases such as what we are talking about, even when they are more than 14 years old, we would need a slightly more containing community, in conditions of preventing the escapes that often frustrate the educational recovery work. Let’s not forget that under 14 we are talking about a minimum percentage of crimes committed, less than that of many advanced countries ».
Someone wonders: when they are as small, how and how much responsibility can fall on parents?
“Certainly there is the civil liability of the parent called to compensate the damage created by the minor children, there could also be a criminal responsibility when the parent could prevent the crime of the minor son and does not do so, there is a regulatory grip but it is not exactly clear. The case in which the crime is committed in competition or on the instigation of the parent, in that case, is different, Chiara, the criminal responsibility of the parent. When you can try this, the adult criminally replies, then sometimes we clash with the practical aspect of demonstrating that the parent or adult somehow has conditioned or determined the minor to commit that crime “.
When as in this case the context is Rom, the first reaction is always: we clear the fields. “We make another hypothetical reasoning, in a neighborhood already in difficulty, this group of nomads arrives that settles there, those children will ever look at them until they combine what they have combined, but why? Because those who are perhaps the hundredth problem, we have the other 99 that are not seen. I would like to understand in that neighborhood how many children who deserve help, an opportunity, a chance, they are not followed because we do not do it, because we cannot, because the services do not have resources, do not have the money and Milan is a municipality that has invested over the years and turns off. Be careful, I don’t want to be misunderstood: Milan has put a lot on it and puts it so much and it doesn’t make it, let alone the others who have invested less. Now the case wanted this tragic event to have occurred in Milan, but we should ask ourselves not so much about how to eliminate the fields because if we move them and put them on another side we only move the problem, but on what to do for these children who go, how to say, subtracted from a fate that accompanies them towards a road of deviance even adult if we do not intervene, because we found them at the helm of that car but in two or three years A few more if we don’t intervene ».
Sometimes a sort of social resignation takes over: “We don’t do it so much, it’s a drop in the sea”. Meanwhile, you feel insecure especially among the poor.
«The problem is that social policies to prevent children’s crimes must be built over time, then someone will always escape you, but you have to try to throw the net and take as much as possible to accompany them to safety places for everyone, this is the real theme we have to deal with. In front of such a serious event, the emotionality does not help us so let’s leave it to social media. But if we want to question ourselves seriously we must say that serious investments are needed because sooner or later the discomfort that matures under the ash emerges: we see it with unaccompanied minors, we talked about the difficulties of reception, the structures that are not enough, but then we put aside and the problem is still there. But the experience tells me that doing things is not useless: twenty years ago at the Miglile Beccaria prison in Milan we had a lot of Roma boys, today there is someone, but much less than then. This means that something has been done on that front, that a little prevention has worked ».
Is there often a lack of structures, is it a problem?
«Yes, when I was in Milan, and this is the case even today, we expected months to have the community for a boy to a precautionary extent, that is, in criminal extent. Figure for those for which it must be prevented. There are talk of family homes, but many more would be needed ».
