Salvini seeks to lower Italy’s age of criminal responsibility to 12 after gang incidents

Far-right leader Matteo Salvini has renewed calls to lower Italy’s age of criminal responsibility.

His call came after a large brawl broke out among youngsters at Lake Garda in the north of the country, which became a national incident after footage was shared on social media.

Videos showed hundreds of young men causing havoc on the shores of the lake and jumping on vehicles. According to local media many were underage.

Some press reports focused on the fact that some of the troublemakers were second or third generation immigrants, though this was not confirmed elsewhere.

In Italy a child under the age of 14 cannot be tried in court for a crime. For years now, Mr Salvini’s Lega Nord party has been pushing for the age to be lowered to 12.

At the same time, there was a reported incident of sexual assault on as many as 10 girls by up to 30 men in Milan.

“From North to South, the escalation of violence caused by baby gangs hasn’t stopped. For three years now a law that was introduced by the League has been stagnant in parliament,” Salvini told the press.

“We ask that the age of criminal responsibility for minors be lowered… it is urgent that politicians address this emergency because citizens have the right to live in complete safety,” he added.

According to the National Observatory for Adolescence, 6.5 percent of minors in Italy are part of a gang, while 16 per cent have vandalised and another three in ten have participated in a fight.

“Baby gangs, made up of minors that are part of criminal groups, are becoming more and more numerous and threatening,” Luca Bernardo, the director of Pediatrics at a Milan hospital told local media. “The phenomenon affects the South as much as the North, and the most affected regions are Piedmont, Lombardy and Emilia Romagna.”

But critics of the proposed bill have spoken out over the years with some calling it mere punishment and not education.

“Minors still have evolving personalities. We cannot afford to label them as criminals. We are the adults,” wrote Susanna Marietti, a member of Antigone, an organization that works to guarantee people’s rights within the legal system.

“Criminal repression does not educate. Punishment alone does not educate,” wrote Marietti.

Meanwhile, Italy went to the polls on Sunday in a first round of local elections as well as five referendums on the justice system, in part prompted by populist Salvini’s League party.

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The referendums include one on abolishing the so-called ‘Severino law’ that stops people definitively convicted of several serious crimes, including corruption, from being able to stand in European, national and regional elections for six years. So far, this law’s most high profile application was against allowing Silvio Berlusconi to sit in the Senate after a conviction for tax fraud.

Salvini and Berlusconi were out voting on Sunday.

Another referendum is about stopping prosecutors changing careers to become judges and vice-versa. Another two referendums regard cases in which people can be detained on remand and the election of the members of the judiciary’s self-governing body.

The final vote is on lawyers’ voting to assess the performance of magistrates.