Prisons: Antigone, concern minors reported for mafias

(by Melania Di Giacomo) (ANSA) - ROME, FEBRUARY 21 - Less crime and fewer prisoners, 375 according to the latest available data: "a sign that juvenile justice works". Although the increase in the last 5 years of minors reported by the police to the judicial authority for mafia-type associations is worrying: they were 49 in 2014, and 95 in 2018 (+ 93.8%). This is what emerges from the report on criminal institutions for minors of the Antigone association, entitled this year 'Healing the cherry trees', in homage to the song 'Un medico' by Fabrizio De André. This is a figure that clashes with the general decline in other crimes: between 2014 and 2018, reports decreased by 8.3%, from over 33,300 to 30,600. Murders (-46.6%), kidnappings (-17.2%) and thefts (-14.03%) decreased. Italy then resorts to the detention of minors in a residual way, because "the task of the juvenile justice system", explains Susanna Marietti, Antigone coordinator and curator of the relationship, "is to promote any future possibility, making the young person perceive to have before him all the alternatives of life ". As of January 15 this year, there are 375 prisoners, distributed in 17 institutions, from Caltanissetta to Treviso, down from 2017 when they were 452. In that same year, 794 were hosted in France and Germany, 895 in the United Kingdom. " Low numbers which are good news and which are also accompanied by a decrease in the numbers of juvenile crime ", as evidenced by the president of Antigone, Patrizio Gonnella. The institute with the most presences is that of Nisida, with 45 inmates on January 15, while on the same date there were only 3. In Caltanissetta there are 23 girls, 12 of them in Pontremoli, the only entirely female. The stay is generally short: on average 102 days in 2019. 72% of the boys who entered were in pre-trial detention. 70% of the crimes are committed by Italians, who however represent 57.1% of the prisoners. Crimes against the person, generally more serious, affect only 17%. 62% have committed property crime. This is because, underlines Antigone, the juvenile penal institution, "works not as a sanction proportionate to the seriousness of the offense committed, but as a tool that the judicial authority uses to affect the treatment path of each one". In the face of this limited use of detention, an important role is given to the host communities, where 1,104 children from the penal area are included. Their presence has almost doubled in the past 10 years. (HANDLE).