What if there's no sea outside? Reflections on the decline of juvenile justice.

Matteo Salvini demands that juvenile offenders be treated like adults, with the same penalties. Juvenile justice, originally intended to educate, now punishes : so much so that several associations (Antigone, Defence for Children Italia, Libera, and Gruppo Abele) have sent an official submission to the Committee that monitors the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to denounce the regression of juvenile justice in Italy. Unaccompanied foreign minors represent an increasingly high percentage of minors who commit crimes and in juvenile detention centers (IPMs), but instead of strengthening reception programs, the government is cutting reimbursements for municipalities that join the SAI and accept them . There are many current issues relating to the relationship between minors and justice. News reports and television talk shows are dedicating increasing space to "maranza" and "baby gangs," denouncing an increase in juvenile crime that has now reached worrying levels. But as psychotherapist Alfio Maggiolini points out in his recent book , "Non solo baby gang. I comportamenti violenti di gruppo in adolescenza " (Franco Angeli), "the social alarm surrounding crimes committed by minors does not at all correspond to an alarming reality." The numbers ( here are the latest data from the Ministry of the Interior ) speak of 31,173 minors reported in 2023, a 4.15% decrease compared to 2022. This means we are back to the five-year period from 2011 to 2016, when the numbers were stable around that figure, while from 2017 to 2020 there was a decidedly downward trend, culminating with 25,088 minors reported in the year of the lockdowns. From then on, effectively, two years of accelerated recovery before the decline in 2023.

These are all issues where there's no black and white, but an infinite number of shades of gray: those of reality, told not through the filter of ideology but through its complexity. Paolo Tartaglione is the Juvenile Criminal Justice Area coordinator for the National Coordination of Welcoming Communities – CNCA and president of the Arimo social cooperative: he works with minors in trouble with the law every day.

Let's start with unaccompanied foreign minors, a group of clearly vulnerable young people at risk of experiencing borderline illegality if they aren't placed in particularly motivating and structured reception and educational programs. VITA is presenting this very segment, with a clear positive bias toward reception but without denying the complexities. Is it true that the presence of unaccompanied foreign minors among minors who commit crimes and at Beccaria is steadily increasing?

Yes, the presence of foreign children at Beccaria—and I wouldn't say just unaccompanied foreign minors—is increasing, especially in the last two and a half years. Father Claudio Burgio—who is undoubtedly very knowledgeable— said in an interview with VITA that 87% of the minors at Beccaria are unaccompanied foreign minors (MSNA) , a figure I imagine actually refers to foreigners in general, not just unaccompanied foreign minors. It's certainly true that the number of unaccompanied foreign minors committing crimes in Milan has increased... but we're talking about Milan. It's not like that everywhere in Italy.

In what sense?

Milan and a few other large cities are particularly attractive to young people arriving in Italy. Since there is no national management system, leaving everything to the children's spontaneous choices, it's obvious that Milan has particularly high numbers of unaccompanied foreign minors. This is a real issue and not a new one. On the other hand, to put things into context, we must reiterate that the overall number of unaccompanied foreign minors in Italy is extremely modest (16,497 as of June 30, 2025) and could easily be managed. However, since there is no national management system for the distribution of these children and since municipalities apply to accept them on a voluntary basis... the situation is as we know it. Milan objectively has a much higher number of unaccompanied foreign minors than the places available in the SAI (National Reception and Reception System): thus, it becomes difficult to guarantee quality reception for so many children, with such significant problems.

Insiders report a change in the profile of unaccompanied foreign minors, something we hadn't yet noticed outside. It concerns their migration plans...

It's a change we've been seeing for at least 15 years. Let's say since 2010, but maybe even earlier.

Before and after: what are the differences?

The young people who arrived in the early 2000s actually had specific skills and abilities, and they came to Italy with a very specific migration plan, mandated by their families. To put it simply, they arrived with the mandate to "succeed." And many of those young people actually succeeded: I still meet many of them; they're now men and women, they have children, and they've often become small business owners. They had remarkable abilities and they put them to good use. The young people arriving today, however, are predominantly—but not always—young people with few resources, who have been, in a certain sense, separated from their families and their communities. They already had problems with school or institutions back home, not with the law, but often there's a concern with conduct and inappropriate behavior. Sometimes we encounter mental health issues. All of this emerges, in a fragmented way, when we reconstruct their stories: let's remember that we're talking about young people we know mostly—if not exclusively—through their own words.

In short, there are very few children whose families send abroad with the idea that they are the best and that they can act as "trailblazers" to create an alternative for the whole family...

Being "sent forward," with great hopes of salvation, is something we haven't seen in a while. I'm not saying families send them here because it's too much of a chore, and I'm sure it's painful... but being "sent forward" is more the story the kids tell themselves than the reality. When they arrive at the community and realize they're in a safe place, that they have people by their side who can help them contain their pain, they begin to put things in order and tell themselves that things have turned out a little differently.

Being "sent forward" by families, with great expectations of salvation, is something we haven't seen for a while: the kids arriving today have few resources, they already had problems with school in their home country, they often present mental health issues.

Perhaps this would be the topic to address, the pain and the many fragilities of these kids...

Juvenile justice had a good idea in 1988, with a law that viewed crime as an adolescent's way of expressing a cry for help: this remains true. If young people who frequently arrive alone have few resources, don't speak Italian, and have issues prior to migration, compounded by the trauma of the journey and the cultural impact... we shouldn't be too surprised that they are particularly exposed to the risk of being involved or becoming involved in illegal or marginalized activities. Nor should we be surprised that among the ways to express their cry for help—having few resources and a lot of trauma—they may resort to crime. This, I repeat, we have known for years.

It's no surprise that these kids, with few resources and many traumas, may resort to crime as a way to express their need for help. It's always happened, but today our response has changed.

So what has changed today?

In recent years, the cultural approach of those who respond to juvenile crimes has changed. Today, I have the impression that institutions are disoriented across the board, in the sense that I wouldn't have expected very different approaches from the political forces currently not in government. They are trying to provide a response to what is happening, but because they misunderstand the phenomenon, they are responding in an incorrect and counterproductive manner. Minister Salvini already said in September 2023 that a fourteen-year-old who makes a mistake should pay the same price as a fifty-year-old man. This idea has been abundantly refuted by history, but it demonstrates how much we risk losing the specificity of juvenile criminal justice interventions that has guided Italy to the point of making us a "beacon" for other countries. Juvenile justice has three essential elements, which we are losing and which must be reaffirmed.

What are these three elements of juvenile justice culture that need to be rediscovered and defended?

The first is prioritizing the reduction of recidivism over the retributive and punitive aspects of punishment: if we want to reduce crimes committed by juveniles, reduce recidivism, society must accept that the educational aspect must be prioritized, even at the cost of sacrificing some punishment. This is why juvenile justice has always sought to reduce the use of incarceration and prioritize early release from the penal system: by doing so, we have achieved extraordinary reductions in recidivism. The second element is identifying the underlying needs of the crime, seeking to ensure they are addressed. While it is true that behind an adolescent's crime there are always unanswered needs—developmental needs—it is crucial that, after the crime, these needs are understood and addressed, because at that point, the crime becomes less likely to occur. The third element is holding those who commit crimes accountable for their actions. Legislators have provided professionals with a wealth of tools to achieve these three objectives, but today we see the culture of juvenile justice, which has brought so many successes over the past thirty years, retreating. Today we are at a crossroads. Do we continue to think that minors who commit crimes are unwell, unable to grow up, and who, by committing a crime, are challenging the adult world? Or are they simply petty criminals, as politicians are telling us? If this is the idea, then we try to scare them, increasing penalties. But increasing penalties and creating new crimes is pointless, as even Minister Nordio clearly stated in December 2022.

Young people don't fear prison because they come from worse situations. If we think we can scare them by making sentences harsher, we haven't understood the stories they have.

Why doesn't toughening penalties serve as a deterrent?

First of all, because the kids we're talking about don't even know it: they don't read newspapers, they don't watch TV news, they don't stay informed, they have no idea that sentences have been increased. Second, they don't care: they don't fear being in prison, because they come from worse situations. If we think we're scaring them, we haven't understood their stories. Take, for example, the decision to reintroduce uniforms in juvenile prisons, which haven't been seen in decades: do we really think we're scaring kids with uniforms? On the contrary, we're pushing them to play cops and robbers, a game in which adults always lose: it's easier for adults to be afraid of out-of-control teenagers than the other way around. The other losing approach is to focus only on the present.

What does this mean? And what does this crushing of the present entail?

Despite their very young age, most juvenile offenders have already given up on imagining a fulfilling future for themselves and seek satisfaction in the present, even by committing actions that will obviously have negative consequences over time. Consider the commission of crimes, of course, but also the massive use of substances: if someone doesn't believe they have a future worth investing in, and doesn't fear the consequences in the present, how can we expect them to stop these behaviors? Young people who enter Beccaria with one crime often have seven, eight, or ten after a few weeks. Crimes committed in IPM. Because if you only think in the present, having one crime or twenty is the same thing, it doesn't change anything. Things can only change if you think about the future: there, having twenty crimes is different from having one. But what do I expect from the future? Do I expect something desirable, beautiful, bright? The key to successful education lies here: imagining a different future. This must be done from the first day a child enters the IPM: when faced with a teenager challenging adults with a crime, the adult must respond by challenging the teenager to imagine a different future, to imagine a change in their personality. The law dictates this, so much so that probation is evaluated on the basis of personality transformation. With these kids, everything has to do with the future. But this is the real issue: we are losing the ability (and perhaps the desire) to challenge adolescents about the future, about preparing a desirable future. Therefore, returning to the initial question, rather than the kids themselves changing, I would say that the adults' response—at this time—is very different from the past.

If you only think in the present, having one crime or having twenty is the same thing. Things can only change if you think about the future. This is the issue: we are losing the ability (and perhaps the desire) to challenge adolescents to imagine a desirable future.

But you—if I understand correctly—are saying something more. It's not just another response, an expression of another culture: it's that this other response is ineffective. Is that correct?

The government can also declare that juvenile offenders are "petty criminals" and therefore build new juvenile prisons, but let's expect this not to curb the phenomenon of adolescent crime.

Let's return to unaccompanied foreign minors, as you described them earlier and so far from our imagination. Do we need specific answers for them?

The same applies to everyone, because, as I repeat, we're talking about adolescents, people in training. Obviously, the objectives of the work vary: for a foreign youth, what I can think about from day one is charting a path to legalization. The point is that there is a future, which can then be filled with different things. When that future doesn't and can't exist—I'm thinking of impeding crimes—these youths lose a strong motivation to engage in a process of change.

It's often said that there are so many unaccompanied minors in the IPMs because they have nowhere else to stay. Is that true? This is the issue of the size of the reception system. In the SAI, we know that the places are far below what's needed, but even in the communities, it seems increasingly difficult to find placements for these children.

That's partly true, but this applies to both Italians and foreigners. In the first twenty years of the third millennium, there was very effective collaboration between juvenile justice and educational communities, especially in certain regions like Lombardy. Today, communities are going through a very difficult period; many have closed or are afraid they won't be able to survive. Many have decided to no longer accept certain types of clients. Why do they do this? I believe it's because it's increasingly difficult to assemble a trustworthy educational team that's up to certain challenges. Bringing ten adolescents who are struggling for various reasons under the same roof is a wonderful educational challenge, and it's our job: but you can do it if the facility is in good shape. Otherwise, the risk is that things even worse than those outside will happen in the community. Our cooperative currently hosts 19 offenders, five of whom are charged with attempted murder: we're not turning a blind eye. However, I cannot blame the communities that have decided not to do so, because they are taking a very big risk.

Our cooperative currently houses 19 offenders, five of whom are charged with attempted murder. However, I can't blame the communities for not doing so. We need a team up to the task, which is very difficult these days.

How are we doing in Lombardy?

At Beccaria, which is packed to the brim with children, there are 60-70 youths. By law, incarceration is only possible where there are compelling social needs. Clearly, not all youths meet these criteria; some could certainly be outside the IPM. The Lombardy community system should therefore accommodate a few dozen youths, say about forty: it could certainly do so. The best thing would be to convene the Lombardy communities at a meeting involving the institutions (Juvenile Court, Juvenile Prosecutor's Office, Juvenile Justice Center, and the City of Milan): a meeting where they can discuss the problem together and determine how to overcome it.

Isn't there this dialogue with the communities?

Institutions are certainly doing so, and in fact I believe it's one of the things requiring the most energy: but right now, everything happens on a one-to-one basis. But I expect a meeting from public authorities to explicitly address the issues: "Why aren't you welcoming these kids? Under what conditions do you think you can welcome them?" The Lombardy Region, at the request of the Ministry of Justice, has just opened three new communities, each with 12 places, which will accommodate young offenders with mental health issues. The fee is €320 per day: between double and triple the fee for educational communities. We're building places where the most problematic kids are concentrated, all under one roof: in my opinion, this is the exact opposite of the direction we should be going, which is to place particularly troubled offenders in pairs in other communities.

We must not think that communities are the only alternative to prison: we must encourage the use of other tools, such as educational apartments, and the creation of new services

What makes it more difficult today—compared to the past—to welcome juvenile offenders, whether Italian, foreign, or unaccompanied minors? And what more do communities need?

The first is building teams that are up to the task, which is very difficult right now. The second is increasing fees to strengthen the team. The third is the possibility of removing a child from the community if the community deems them dangerous for themselves or others: communities often refuse to accept them because they fear being left "holding the baby." But above all, we must work intensely to revitalize the culture of juvenile justice that has effectively guided the work of all of us professionals for nearly forty years. And then, we must not think that communities are the only alternative to prison: we must encourage the use of other tools, such as educational apartments, and the creation of new services, including non-residential ones, that can allow young people who are able to do so to engage in compelling educational programs even while remaining in their families.

Opening: IPM Beccaria in Milan, photo by Stefano Porta / LaPresse

Tags:
• prison
• Justice
• Minors