Les rapports entre adultes et enfants dans les décisions pénales des tribunaux italiens (1930–2010)

Abstract

Children have long been the objects and not the subject of legal rights. Social and political evolution has led to a progressive recognition of a series of rights, which have unfortunately often continued to exist only on paper. The gap between legal norms and practice was visible throughout the twentieth century and one of the focal points was the use of violence in the education of children. In Italy the so-called jus corrigendi, written into law during the Fascist period, continued to have an influence for a long time, and to feed a doctrinal and jurisprudential debate long after the Republican Constitution. This complex relationship among laws, social practices and pedagogic ideas has not been modified in a linear manner over time, but does show some important discontinuities: in particular in the 1970s (during and after the student revolts) and at the beginning of the 1990s (with the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child). A good place to see the situation is in the different weight given to factors presented before and taken into consideration in the penal judgments of Italian courts from the end of the Second World War up to today. Court sentences are historical sources of special interest and utility, above all because they represent points of mediation of case law with the development of the ‘social conscience’. They place before our eyes many aspects of the relationships between adults and children (especially between parents and children), relationships often marked by abuse and violence. In the same way they illustrate the different ways (and sometimes there is a great contrast) in which the same identical situations have been interpreted and judged in courts over time. The discovery of the child thus makes its path between the authoritarianism of tradition and progressive impulses. In Italy at the end of the twentieth century the move to a new relationship between adults and children, characterised by affection and empathy, was sanctioned by the courts and put into effect in society in the spheres of school education and work, although inside the family there was still resistance, with more and more significant court cases resulting than is commonly believed.