After the massacre of Altavilla Milicia, which involved an entire family entangled in the coils of religious fanaticism, we are once again talking about “psycho-sects” and “psychological manipulation” by holy men or “anointed by the Lord” (but which ?) to which the victims are totally subjected and which, obviously, go unpunished.
In fact, the abrogation of art. 603 of the criminal code (which provided for the crime of plagiarism), carried out by the Constitutional Court with the sentence of 8 June 1981, nr. 96, has left an easily perceptible void in protection: yes, but the Law is the Law, and everything can be abolished with the stroke of a pen.
Let's give some examples.
Let's start well with the infamous Merlin law which, in 1958, abolished prostitution, until then authorized and controlled by the State. As is known, since then, all the poor women forced to dress scantily and stand on the avenues are not prostitutes but people waiting for the tram.
Let's move on, then, to political correctness.
The theater show “Brutta” debuted on Friday 22 December 2023 in Bari. A story of a body like many others” by Giulia Blasi, with Cristiana Vaccaro. In the monologue we hear «Ugly, racchia, cessa, sewer, ciospa, mussel, wild boar, scorpion fish, hood, curbstone, witch, monster, nutria. The ugly woman has more names than God.”
Much earlier, in his programs, Milton Berle (American comedian, actor and television presenter) went so far as to say: «She was so ugly that her polaroids didn't want to come out of the car», «She was so cross-eyed that, when she opened one eye, all that that she could see was the other eye”, “They said she was ugly as sin. And sin sued them.”
Even earlier, Winston Churchill, fine humorist as well as great statesman, to Bessy Braddock, member of Parliament, who had addressed him by saying “Winston, you're drunk!” he replied «It's true, Bessy, but you're ugly. And in the morning I will be sober, but you will always be ugly.”
Obviously every adjective can be conjugated to the masculine (except for Bessy Braddock).
Art? Satire? However, forms of extreme body shaming and, therefore, execrable and to be erased from the history of humanity.
While waiting for body shaming to be transformed into an autonomous crime and therefore, once abolished by law, “racchie” and “racchi” become, again by law, “a type”, using those terms will risk – as well as the social disapproval – a trial for defamation (so says the Supreme Court of Cassation with sentence no. 2251 of 14/12/2022, filed on 19/01/2023).
Moreover, our wise Legislator has already abolished poverty by law; the voice of the young unemployed man who the voters had transformed into minister of labor and vice-president of the Council still resounds from the balcony: “Today we abolish poverty”. Although, immediately afterwards, poverty increased (less than two years later Italian wealth decreased by 12.8%).
And how can we forget that with law 180 of 1978, known as the Basaglia law, have we abolished madness? In reality, today, in most Italian regions there are psychiatric clinics open for a few hours only some days a week, or mental health centers open no more than 12 hours for 5/6 days a week. To be honest, this law did not provide for the abandonment of the person with mental health problems but rather for accompaniment and taking charge by the State. However, once the compulsory health treatment (TSO) has been established, arranged and concluded, people with psychiatric problems – in the absence of suitable and sufficient public health facilities – are returned to their families, regardless of any consideration regarding the ability and possibility of the family members to adequately accompany the patient.
Things went even worse for them judicial psychiatric hospitals (OPG); in Italy, they were a category of institutions that can be counted among the prisons that replaced the old criminal asylums in the mid-1970s. They were abolished by law in 2013, but closed permanently on 31 March 2015, replaced by the Residences for the Execution of Security Measures (REMS).
Until a couple of years ago, in Italy, around 30 REMS with 600 beds were active. In Lombardy there is the one in Castiglione delle Stiviere for a total of 160 places. In this regard, the President of the Special Prison Commission of the Lombardy Region Antonella Forattini, after yet another suicide in prison, that of a twenty-one year old waiting to be placed in a Rems, argued that “It is not acceptable that in Lombardy there still exists only one Rems, that of Castiglione delle Stiviere, which moreover is in serious difficulty both in terms of space and personnel and is seriously overcrowded. The Limbiate residence is still on hold and the Castiglione expansion works have recently started again after a long wait caused by the challenge to the tender notice issued by Aria. The waiting lists number hundreds of people waiting to be included in Rems”.
The Constitutional Court, to arrive at sentence no. 22 of 27 January 2022, on the subject of REMS, had issued ordinance 131/2021, with which it ordered a specific investigation, pursuant to art. 12 of the supplementary rules for judgments before the Constitutional Court, aimed at acquiring specific information deemed essential for the purposes of the decision. In summary, according to the final press release, the concrete application of the current regulations regarding residences for the execution of security measures (REMS) towards offenders suffering from mental pathologies presents numerous aspects of friction with the constitutional principles , which the legislator must eliminate as soon as possible.
In particular, the investigation ordered by the Court revealed that on average there are between 670 and 750 (today more than 1,000) people on the waiting list for assignment to a REMS; that the average waiting times are around ten months, but even much longer in some Regions; and that many of these people – deemed socially dangerous by the judge – have committed serious crimes, including violent ones.
For example, Stefan Meran Alejandro Augusto, the Dominican citizen who on 4 October 2019, when brought to the police station in Trieste, killed police officers Matteo Demenego and Pierluigi Rotta. The murderer was acquitted for total mental defect on 6 May 2022 and he was ordered to be admitted to a Rems for a minimum of 30 years. Given the lack of suitable structures, both in the region and in Italy, he was held in prison for about a year.
However, the European Court of Human Rights, with sentence dated 24 January 2022 (Application no. 11791/20), in a similar case, condemned the Italian State for the violation of articles 3, 5 and 6 of the Convention perpetrated against damages of a citizen subjected to detention measures applied in an ordinary prison regime, despite the decisions of the judges who had ascertained his criminal responsibility having ordered his hospitalization in a REMS. Furthermore, the ECHR defined the applicant's deprivation of liberty as “illegal”, condemning the Italian State to pay him the sum of 36,400 euros for moral damage and 10,000 euros for costs. And hypothetically, therefore, Stefan Meran Alejandro Augusto would also be entitled to it.
Now he is in a room with a bathroom in the private facility of Santa Maria Calice al Cornoviglio, in the province of La Spezia, managed without the presence of the Penitentiary Police but equipped with discreet video surveillance. It is the only one in Italy capable of hosting patients even from outside the region and can contain a maximum of 21 people for temporary and exceptional stays.
Upon closer inspection, it cannot be completely ruled out that, in a few years, if Stefan Meran Alejandro Augusto's social dangerousness were to reduce, the doors of probation could also open for him.
At that point, the opportunity to abolish by law the anger and pain of the victims' families will have to be seriously evaluated.
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