From imprisonment to care: a concrete alternative is needed for minors who have committed crimes.
The tragedy of prison deaths also reaches juvenile prisons. A 17-year-old boy attempted suicide on August 11, two days after his arrest, in Treviso prison, hanging himself with his jeans. He was rescued while still alive and taken to the hospital, where he died two days later. " A simple confinement is no longer understandable or acceptable ," says Franco Taverna , vice president of Don Mazzi's Exodus Foundation .
Taverna, is the suicide of a seventeen-year-old in the Treviso juvenile justice system last week a tragedy that testifies to the crisis in the juvenile justice system?
The situation could be addressed on at least two fronts. I believe that the issue of the treatment system for minors who have committed crimes, in light of the events that have occurred since last year, particularly in juvenile detention centers (such as Beccaria in Milan, Sollicciano, Nisida, and Casal del Marmo), has completely collapsed. And it has collapsed because a simple confinement approach is no longer comprehensible or acceptable . The state must consider other types of interventions.
The second front on which to address the situation?
Immediately connected to this first issue is another: intervention in the community. It must be said that Italy has some of the most advanced legislation in Europe regarding the treatment of minors. The vast majority of minors who have committed crimes are referred to local social services offices for minors. In Lombardy, there are the Social Services for Minors (USSM). Beyond their limited staff, the USSM have a duty, like penal institutions, to monitor the behavior of juveniles, that is, to ensure that further crimes are not committed and that there are no recidivism.
The focus is on behavior, on whether there is a way of acting compatible with other people, a proper way of being together among young people. This is the real point. The distress experienced by boys and girls (who commit crimes at a much lower rate than boys)—we're talking about pre-adolescents and adolescents— is much greater than what was experienced even just 20 years ago .
In your opinion, why?
Because the complexity of the situation, including the lives, perceptions, and perspectives of boys and girls on the world, is very different and cannot be considered from just one perspective. The main issue is this: pre-adolescents are complex entities and should not be considered simply as one issue .
Explain it to us better.
The issues are psychological problems, school dropouts, their social problems (if they come from a disadvantaged family, they are placed in a juvenile facility), and their behavior (including crime). There are at least four perspectives, which are partial. Boys and girls are a unit; all their characteristics fit together. If we want to seriously address the increasingly rampant and explosive problems, we need only look at the middle schools that serve children aged 10 to 14. It's rare that schools truly work with these children.
When do schools operate?
Where there are teachers who have the ability and courage to take an educational, not merely didactic, approach. Where do the USSMs work? Where there are social workers who take an educational, not merely restraining, approach. Where do the Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry Units work here in Lombardy? Where there are neuropsychiatric units that also have an educational focus. There is a growing awareness of this among these stakeholders: teachers, neuropsychiatrists, social workers, and municipal and local social services.
We need services that have the capacity to create stable projects in the area that accommodate the complexity of the child.
Now, we need to transform this awareness into concrete projects. And not only that, into ongoing services. We now need services that have the capacity—first the expertise, and then the courage—to create stable local projects that embrace the complexity of the young person . We need a service where the young person feels welcomed, not one that controls their behavior and where they must demonstrate that they have no longer stolen, sold drugs, or acted violently towards others. We need a service that truly cares about the young people , that takes charge of the situations. I believe the issue of comprehensive care is the real current problem for pre-adolescents and adolescents .
So, in your opinion, what's missing is a real networking effort, a vision that can bring all these complexities together?
The internet is no longer enough . We really need services, places, and people. It's not enough for the neuropsychiatrist to talk to the local social worker and send them information. It's not enough for the enlightened teacher to send the information sheet to the municipality so they know a student's family is in need or that a child goes to school on Monday morning with bruises on their face. That's not enough. We need places, spaces where these children who are showing signs of illness (and here you also need a capacity for observation, which isn't a given) can be taken care of. That is, places where one can come, but not from 3 to 4 p.m., when they're needed. This is what's absolutely missing right now, and what we've begun to do.
Can you tell us about the project you're working on with Exodus?
We've started a project in Monza, in a place called Spazio 3, and we'd like to try to do it in Milan, in an even larger space. It's a place where the skills of child neuropsychiatry, social investment, education, and school can converge. So that one can be there when there are peaks of distress. There are moments in life that cause distress, when a friend passes away or other events that disturb and disrupt a child's life . In these moments , someone is needed who doesn't simply check whether they're behaving well, but who helps them understand when they're in their room cutting themselves, what's inside them, why they haven't felt like themselves and haven't felt that others are caring .
The Monza project is one of the outcomes of a project we started five years ago, with minors who had committed crimes. The project was carried out with the support of the social enterprise Con i bambini. We had about a hundred young people from Lombardy, Lazio, and Sicily, to whom we proposed "high-intensity educational" projects, with the support I mentioned. For us, this high intensity takes different forms, it has an everyday dimension but also a very important, crucial, fundamental dimension: adventure. Boys and girls must have the opportunity, during a period like adolescence, to experience positive adventures .
Why are positive adventures important?
Because if there are no positive adventures, the negative ones remain . We need to offer them these opportunities. We offered caravans and adventures to these kids, reported by the Social Services for Minors (USSM). In groups, they had itinerant experiences, even very adventurous trips. We were unfortunate enough to start during an unfortunate period, that of Covid. We started in 2020, and continued until 2024. We learned that adventures are essential and provide a positive boost .
Adventures are important, if there are no positive adventures, the negative ones remain
And after the adventures, what do you need?
Then we need continuity, places where this positive adventure, this commitment, can continue. This is where Spazio Tre was born in 2022, as one of the outcomes of the caravan, in the San Rocco neighborhood of Monza. There we began to develop expressive methods and articulate music. Rap and trap are immediate forms of expression , very easy and understandable for the kids. Some, for example, even passed their eighth-grade exams with a rap song. Spazio 3's various activities are attracting many participants; currently, it is attended by 47 kids, which is a variety of people. Discomfort isn't simply what is labeled with a school grade, a medical diagnosis, or the fact that you are an unaccompanied foreign minor; it's within you, and often it explodes. If you have unlabeled discomfort, it explodes somewhere.
What's important to us is that these settings shouldn't be labeled. They shouldn't be places that welcome minors who have committed crimes, or kids with psychiatric issues, panic attacks, anxiety, or bulimia . We need integrated places, where the theme of the experiences is present: music, caravans, adventures .
This is the opportunity for redemption that young people have. And from there, they emerge. Adolescence has always been, perhaps always will be, a time of transformation. These powerful experiences also become a way for them to identify. Some, for example, have recorded two playlists and are now on Spotify. We'd like to expand, we'd like to ensure that they don't experience this reality solely through projects, but that public bodies, the municipality and the region, recognize these places as places that can potentially accommodate this type of hardship , which is now increasingly widespread. There's another topic worth discussing.
What theme?
The issue of expectation. If there's no expectation, if you're invisible and insignificant to everyone, then you might as well hide in your room or take drugs . There's a resurgence of drug use among minors, who are more likely to take drugs, partly because they can easily be purchased with a cell phone. Before, you had to at least leave your room and go wait for the dealer in the square; now, not even that is necessary.
Photo by Alan Le Bihan on Unsplash
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