Rassegna penitenziaria e criminologica最新文献

In this article the Author considers the modern-day and historical situation as regards the administration of justice in Spain, pausing to make a particularly careful analysis of those crimes whose rate of increase, over the past few years, has been the greatest. He runs back over the various stages of Spain's recent history: from the period preceding Franco's regime, during which a multiplicity of criminological theories were developed by Spanish authors, leading to the creation of a school of jurisprudence, in which theory and practice tended toward seeking a balance between freedom and security; through the period of the dictatorship, in which there was a tightening-up of the preceding trend, with a definite predisposition towards security, whether within the State or external to it (to be noted--the Author observes--is that this security in reality is not a guarantee of the lives and liberties of the citizens, but rather only a safeguarding of the State from attacks on its supremacy and power); to the successive period of the democracy, which came about without cruel and revolutionary upsets, but nonetheless has felt for many years the effects of the preceding political climate; criminality is increasing considerably, but the administration of justice is not able to soundly and accurately evaluate it, it having functioned at only 45% efficiency--or so says the Author--up until 1978: the imbalances in the society that can be seen in its passage through the various political regimes are, therefore, present too in the field of criminality; this, in fact, is apparently decreasing (since crimes against the external and internal security of the State are decreasing, as the number of convictions are decreasing); but in reality this criminality is undergoing a strong evolutionary movement, due more than anything else to the fact that the tendency is to give priority to liberty, and no longer to security, as is true in fact of every democratic regime. Even in 1978, when the new regime was by now consolidated and stabilized, the administration of justice had found too stability and balance; the consequences of this are, on the one hand, a decrease in crimes against the state as such, and on the other hand, an increase in the crimes peculiar to a democratic country (such as terrorism, drug-pushing, robbery) committed by ever-younger criminals.

This study poses to the reader's attention the phenomenon of the protest demonstrations that took place in the penal and custodial institutions in Italy from 1972 to 1979. A first processing of the data is presented, which points up the salient characteristics and tendencies of the phenomenon. Among the results obtained is the substantially peaceful nature of the protest demonstrations, this being predominant--although during the years 1973, 1974, and 1976 a number, though a moderate fraction of the total, of serious cases took place that involved violence against persons and property, which alarmed public opinion. The motives prevalently brought forth as being the causes of the demonstrations lead back to the conditions of convict life, to the convicts' hopes and expectations before and after the penal reform bill of 1975, and, often, to the points arrived at regarding their trials. Since 1978 the demonstrations have been almost entirely peaceful.

The Authors, after having studied the specific literature on the subject, publish data regarding 27 women who were victims of uxoricide. The adoption of a victimological viewpoint permits hypothesizing that: 1) it is sociological factors that seem to be fundamental to determining the classes of the women who are more subject to this specific danger; 2) bio-physio-psychological factors seem to be relevant to determining which women, within the class subject to this specific danger, are unable to recognize their danger, or, though having recognized it, are unable to avoid it; 3) factors extraneous to the victim, inherent in the personality structure of the perpetrators of the crime and in their cultural values (as well as in the various meanings that the uxoricide, at both the conscious and the unconscious levels, may take on for the man when he is committing it) appear to be, in most cases, determining for any specific event.

The multiplicity of advertising "concerns" acts, with a more prominent emphasis in recent times, as the necessary condition for an increasing deterioration of professional reserve to the level of a merely formal statement. Especially as regards the medical profession, as broadly understood, the institution of "specialist categories" directly tied to "public bodies" and to "agencies", private or public, responsible for or helping to effect, the "monitoring" of special characteristics peculiar to the most intimate sphere of subjectivity, remarkable "deviations" can be observed as against the anamnestic (having to do with case histories--trans.), analytic, and clearly therapeutic safeguarding that, to the contrary, ought to receive an inviolable defense on the part of the Italian regulatory system--executive, in the sense of rigorous constitutional provisions. To emphasize the deep erosion of professional reserve, demonstrable to the highest degree by the present levels of penal doctrine and jurisprudence as specifically regards criminal cases sanctioned by art. 622 of the penal code, is therefore equivalent to the bringing into focus of a general social and regulatory problem, one that is obviously expanding, as regards its importance and its capacity to "alarm", within the sphere of the observation of personality and of institutionalized treatment as prescribed by the law of 26 July 1975, no. 354, bearing the title "Penitentiary Organization". The need for establishing a climate of "confidentiality"--confirmed by a number of papers on criminology and "penitentiary technique"--among the convicts, and "therapy", is therefore included within the considerably larger theme of the rights of the condemned person, of his assent to being subjected to "resocializing operations", as well as of the guarantee of not having to undergo further negative consequences, beyond his state of restricted freedom, whether on the legal plane or on the plane of his psycho-physical integrity. Therefore, quite beyond the many-sided (and often these are used as pretexts) "just reasons" brought forth to justify any information, setting specifically aside that of the "consultants spoken of in art. 80" of the law cited, concerning confidential data or anyway sources of harm to the passive subjects, it is urgent that there be given an extremely severe interpretation of the law's provisions, there being symbiotically acknowledged the right to abstain, as regards the consultants themselves, from the "divulging" of any information beyond their strictly medical opinion, and the option for those subjected to observation and treatment to make out a complaint where there are the requisites tending to make the possibility of a crime's having been committed a concrete fact.

Judiciary practice, recently encouraged by legislative provisions, has for some time been, distortedly, attributing to preventive custody the characteristic features of a punishment in advance, and the effects of this as seen in the penitentiary display a complementary doublenes of aspect. On the one hand, the tendency by the reform bill of 1975 to the general privileging of those sentenced with respect to those accused, this being borne out by a common usage that is not, however, always justified by the dictates of the law, prevents the adoption of more advantagious measures for the accused persons. On the other hand, this situation contributes to a further exasperation of the afflictions of detention for those for whom the supposition of their presumed innocence should give rise to concrete, and not merely formal, effects. The need derives from this for a greater attention on the part of prison personnel that must be given to the treatment of those not definitively sentenced, considering that the very reform law leaves space for action in this direction, as well for the purpose of more definitely characterizing a professional attitude aimed at putting the penal institution back in touch with policies in which the traditional repressive and punitive essence is gradually replaced by a new and original dimension of socialization.