Our Penal Code, noted the vice president of the Superior Council of the Judiciary, is approaching the milestone of one hundred years, having been approved in 1930. It is true that it has undergone various modifications over the decades, but the framework remains that given by an exceptional legislator, Alfredo Rocco, Minister of Justice during the fascist regime, a jurist whose value no one, not even the most tenacious antifascists, has ever denied. However, times change and society evolves, the way people think changes. Laws, obviously, must adapt to changes. In the field of justice and criminal law, this need is very strong and constitutes a central aspect of the functioning of representative democracy. Parliament, elected by the citizens, has (or should have) the antennas to capture the requests for security and protection coming from the citizens, translating them into rules, obviously respecting the Constitution.
Mario Roggero, Judge De Gioia: “How he can immediately obtain house arrest”
But, precisely, what does the law say? Because on the “Roggero case,” the jeweler from Grinzane …
ROGGERO CASE
The recent Roggero case is just one example among many possible ones, and they can touch on different aspects (prison, penalties, preventive custody, etc.). But the Roggero affair, more than any other, has questioned us on formidable issues: to what extent can one defend oneself against unjust attacks on our life and property? How to adapt indispensable rules of civilization, those that mark the boundaries of legitimate defense and prevent a wild west on the streets, to the new protection demands that many claim? Intervening on the matter, President Mattarella emphasized that one should not try to adapt the law to every single concrete case, even the one that has most attracted public opinion’s attention. A golden and wise rule: chasing after individual emergencies would make legislation schizophrenic and disorderly. This would contradict the very purpose of laws, which is to provide general rules, that is valid for everyone, and possibly stable over time, to give certainty to citizens. Criminal legislation in recent decades, however, has often shown opposite defects: lack of coherent and organic visions, choices (often oscillating) dictated by the latest news emergency, paroxysmal, and perhaps unnecessary, creation of new crimes.
But then: does it make sense to now, here and now, raise the issue of an organic and rational revision, adapted to new times, of our criminal law? Can it be seriously discussed at this moment, given the conditions of our political system, divided and polarized like never before, moreover in the last year of the legislature, when a very tough electoral campaign seems to have already started?
Read more Those 18 meters: where the body of Roccella’s husband was found | Libero Quotidiano.it
Prison for No-Tav activists from the social center that the left wanted to legalize
The appointment is for this morning at 10. There is a camp, yet another one, to set up, at…
The answer could easily be negative. The task of reviewing a complex code like the penal code is arduous, and would require a political and cultural climate very different from the current one, with a contribution not only from politics but from the best expertise in the sector – I think of the University, criminal lawyers, the judiciary. Realistically, what to do? The alternative is to postpone everything until after the elections. Whoever prevails can, if they deem it appropriate, begin to think about a path towards organic reforms. The question, rather, is: shouldn’t the different political forces running in the elections illustrate to voters, before the vote, their comprehensive and coherent criminal policy program? What do they want? Just to give examples: more or less prison? Milder (but secure) penalties or a generalized toughening of sanctions?
POPULISM
I know that objections to this perspective are strong: criminal law is too delicate a matter to leave to electoral competitions and the inevitable instrumentalizations that derive from them. “Criminal populism,” the rhetoric of “throwing away the key” to prison, in short the easy solutions that get a few more votes, are the worst enemies of the guarantees built by a secular legal civilization, which our Constitution, even in criminal matters, has consecrated. I completely agree. But I observe that one must still go through the voters. Criminal law affects people’s lives, it is not just dry technique. Therefore, if one wants to imagine a comprehensive reform, it must obtain prior approval at the polls. Certainly not on the details, which belong to the experts, but on the underlying inspiration. Democracy works this way.
Read more Myrta Merlino, goodbye Mediaset (and Italy): sensational, who she signed with | Libero Quotidiano.it
