New Publication: Associazione Antigone’s Report on Italian Juvenile Justice

🤸 “I don’t believe you anymore”: VIII Antigone’s Report on Italian Juvenile Justice

On February 25th in Rome, our long-standing partner Associazione Antigone released their latest report on juvenile justice: “Io non ti credo più” (I don’t believe you anymore).

Since 2008, Antigone has been monitoring Juvenile Penal Institutes, gathering both hard data and human stories to understand what is truly happening behind bars and within the broader penal system.
We often hear that juvenile crime in Italy is “exploding,” but the report suggests a different, more complex story. As Susanna Marietti (Antigone’s National Coordinator) points out, the “emergency” isn’t necessarily a rise in crime, it’s a rise in moral panic.

📈 As highlighted during the presentation, despite the fact that there has been no real increase in juvenile crime, Italy’s detention centers are facing unprecedented overcrowding for the first time in decades. This increase would appear to be a direct consequence of the so-called Caivano Decree of September 2023 rather than a rise in actual criminal activity. Antigone’s latest report explores how these legislative shifts—not social behavior—are reshaping the juvenile justice landscape.

👁️‍🗨️ Through a mix of quantitative data and qualitative storytelling, the report paints a picture of a system under pressure not from a “criminal emergency” but from a society that has become quicker to judge and slower to trust. The message would seem to be that if we want to help the next generation, we need to stop looking at them through the lens of fear and start looking at the actual facts of the system.
For further details on the report, here the link to the press pack

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