Four children who shouldn't have been driving, one victim, and the ferocity of adults

There's a photograph we'll never see in the newspapers, and perhaps that's for the best. It's that of four kids —three boys and a girl; eleven, twelve, thirteen years old—awakened at dawn in a caravan site on the outskirts of Milan , surrounded by police who tracked them down after days of intense investigation. Based on what we know from the investigation, they are guilty of hitting and killing Cecilia De Astis , 71, before fleeing on foot, abandoning the stolen car.

The news is relentless in its technical details: road homicide aggravated by failure to provide assistance , file opened by public prosecutor Enrico Pavone, identification through video surveillance systems, witness statements, recognition of the T-shirts.

The public reaction was, predictably, ferocious. On social media, following the news, people called for "exemplary punishment," shouted "Wild West," and demanded that "they pay like adults." It's the usual punitive liturgy that accompanies every crime story, amplified this time by the age of the protagonists and their origins: a Roma camp on Via Selvanesco , which—a not insignificant detail—has been found to be on private land voluntarily made available by the Bosnian owner, without any report of illegal occupation . A detail that escapes the media lynching of those who would automatically turn every nomad into a "squatter."

The Italian legal system has established, in Article 97 of the Penal Code, that minors under the age of fourteen are not accountable (those between fourteen and eighteen may be, but it is up to a judge to determine this). If the minor is deemed "socially dangerous," security measures can be applied. This is not a legal technicality, but the recognition of an incontrovertible scientific fact , supported by dozens of studies in psychiatry and developmental psychology: before that age, the human brain has not yet fully developed the capacity for understanding and willing , impulse control, or understanding the long-term consequences of one's actions. It's neurobiology, not ideology.

But there's more, and it's perhaps the most uncomfortable issue. These four children—because they are children—are the product of a context. No one is born a criminal ; if anything, they become one in an environment where stealing a car and driving it without a license may seem normal, where a supportive adult is absent or dysfunctional, where the streets are the only available school.

Many called for the gallows, but few asked the right questions. Like wondering where social services were, why none of them had documents , why 11- to 13-year-olds were left without adult supervision capable of driving a car. It's more uncomfortable to ask what it means to grow up on the margins, in a society that first excludes you and then criminalizes you.

Parental education is a luxury not everyone can afford. Those who grow up in educational, material, and emotional poverty do not have the same opportunities as those who grow up in prosperity. This isn't moral relativism: it's the recognition that context shapes consciences more than we like to admit . A thirteen-year-old child who drives a stolen car is telling us something specific about his denied childhood.

The Italian penal system knows this, and for this reason it provides alternative measures for innocent minors : not punishments, but tools for protection and rehabilitation. Probation, specialized institutions, educational programs. The goal is not to punish but to rehabilitate, not to seek revenge but to build . It is the approach of a civil society that believes in the possibility of redemption.

Cecilia De Astis's family has the right to grieve, to be angry, and to demand justice . A seventy-one-year-old woman was killed when she was run over by fleeing children, and it's a tragedy no sociological explanation can alleviate. But justice doesn't mean revenge, and above all, it doesn't mean turning four children into monsters .

These Bosnian children were born in Milan , Turin , and Vizzolo Predabissi . They grew up here, learned Italian here, and breathed our air. If they committed such a heinous act, it's not just their parents' or their community's fault: it's also the fault of the social order that allowed it . The fault of the school that didn't reach them, the public bodies that ignored them, the society that considered them marginal until they became criminals.

Because if youth crime is on the rise—since 2010, reports of crimes committed by minors have increased by 39%—the entire Italian system is responsible for this. The real question isn't how much four kids should pay for killing a woman. The real question is how much we're willing to invest to prevent four more kids from finding themselves in the same situation.