University Branches in Prison

This chapter introduces the Italian experience about university in prison. Since ten years many faculties all over the country signed cooperation agreements with penitentiary administrations to pursue and realize the prisoners right to study at the highest levels. Prison management engage itself to warrant structural possibilities to study: quietly sections where prisoners can concentrate while preparing exams, entry license to professors and didactic materials, personnel engaged in monitoring detainees programs of rehabilitation through study. University carries out academic tutorship to support study careers and individual preparations to exams and degree. A bilateral connection links the two institutions: on the one hand, university forwards a service to warrant the prisoners’ right to study. Prison, on the other hand, is an important matter of study for academics (particularly to specific branches: criminology, sociology of law, sociology of deviance, penal and penitentiary law, psychology). This paper offers a national survey about these experiences and concentrate about a specific case: the University of Turin inside the local prison, where Faculties of Law and Political Sciences forward, since 1998, a didactic project, with the involvement of professors and assistants in lectures and exams inside the prison. A specific section is reserved to a certain number of prisoners determined in carrying out a study program, till the degree. The aim is to examine how academic studies may be considered as a specific opportunity to put the rehabilitation ideal into practice, as the article 27 of the Italian Constitution asserts (“punishment must aim to re-education”). Education, combined with work, religion, leisure activity, sport and family contacts, is the means to pursue such function. The university involvement into these projects makes possible a better comprehension about life in prison and an active participation into implementation of detainees people’s rights.

The Professional Training of the Italian Surveillance Magistracy

The Italian prison system is characterized by a sort of schizophrenia (Ferrajoli, 2000) due to two opposite principles of legal framework: the certainty of sentence and the re-educative purpose of imprisonment. The action of the Surveillance Judge (Magistrato di sorveglianza) – a relevant authority for the enforcement of a criminal judgment – takes its place in the heart of such tension. In fact, he must ensure a right implementation of the sentence and, at the same time, he has to attend that the sentence serving is realized in accordance with penal rules and, particularly, with the re-educative aim. Therefore this study will highlight the importance of professional training for serving sentences judges whose educational programming would provide for inputs of criminology and victimology studies. They supply the Surveillance Magistracy (Magistratura di sorveglianza) with cognitive tools to identify the right treatment program for the convicted personality and to promote a mediation process between offenders and victims.

Teaching Criminology to Police Officers

This article introduces the main division within the police corps in Italy and explains some historical reasons and their different task. Then it is exposed the recent change of the local police from political evolution of the State and new tasks established by law. This fast translation entailed a new training of policemen and in few years many changes occurred. While analyzing what happened in these years and which choices were made, it is argued that local police well adapted to new role with flexible cultural instruments. Main school were organized to satisfy the need of standard training, but corps independence allowed to realize single efficient projects particularly needed. Conclusion is the appreciation of free training method for police subjects.

Teaching Criminology and Police Science for Postgraduate Students at the Ruhr- University Bochum, Germany

This case study looks at the postgraduate program in Criminology and Police Science at the Ruhr- University Bochum, Germany. This practice oriented course of study is designed as a distance learning course (blended learning) and therefore focuses on techniques of e-learning. The case study describes the history of origins and examines the educational situation before this master’s program was established and how an idea became reality. It is one of the very few possibilities in Germany to receive a deeper insight into criminology and police science. Despite the fact, that the students are all professionals and thus working mostly full time, the technical premises make a discourse possible as in on-campus programs. These innovative forms of learning are the focal point of the following case study. It is our aim to provide insight into how a master’s program could be set up and to promote new concepts of e-learning in the field of criminology.

Technologies for the Safety of Adolescent

The focus of this paper is to describe a case concerning the key role of security technologies to observe, describe and some way record teenagers’ behaviors and social action at school, at home and in the daily life as a whole. A kind of security “public eye” to protect/control them is pivotal especially according to some High School Policies in Italy aimed to cancel each “blind spot” or “black hole” from the youngsters’ daily life to facilitate cross double checking among parents, relatives, social networks and teachers. In Italy the deviance of youth is increasing and the crime cases involving very young boys, like baby gangs and teenagers working for organized crime are growing rapidly. Among robberies, theft, and dang pushing the juvenile criminality in the Campania Region (an Italian Southern Region) continues to represent a critical point in this society and is unfortunately increasing. The family plays a key role and inside it often baby gangsters, whose parents are completely unaware of what is happening in their children’s lives. “Between school and family” is a project that aspires at tracing a connection between the school and the family thanks to the influence of new technologies and the way in which they influence the interpersonal relationships. What will be, for example, if every school place a fingerprint reader?

Anthropo-Sociological Approach of the Criminology and Applied Victimology

Criminology attempts to explain the causes of crime using two different approaches: the anthropological and the sociological. The anthropological approach focuses on man as the author of crime, and seeks to determine the physical, psychological, motivational, and psychosocial factors, that may have led to the criminal conduct. The sociological approach, on the other hand looks at the macro social factors influencing the insurgence of crime. The problem of social control, namely the way in which a society is able to integrate individuals around a single coherent system of customs, traditions and norms, and thus guarantee community security is connected to the concept of social disorder. The concept of social disorder is also linked to that of marginality, characteristic of the immigrant condition: the loss of cultural roots and the lack of integration in the new cultural context places immigrants in the margins of society. Instances of social problems resulting were reported news broadcasts of events occurring towards the end of 2008 in Italy which suddenly brought to light a series of similar events, evidencing ever more frequent occurrences of racism and xenophobia. These episodes spoke for themselves. Evident as the light of day, it was no longer easy to conceal their true matrix. From the homicide of a Milan boy (from http://www.rainews24.rai.it/notizia.asp?newsid=85897) who had allegedly stolen a packet of biscuits, to the homicides of Castel Volturno immigrants (Castel Volturno is a Southern Italian little city) (from http://www.corriere.it/cronache/08_settembre_19/rivolta_castelvolturno_immigrati_de6698dc-8635-11dd-bef9-00144f02aabc.shtml), the violent Parma bashings, the injuries sustained by a young man from Ghana, and to those in Rome against a Chinese citizen. But this is not the end of the story. This study will analyze the Abba’s homicide. Abba was a young man, an Italian citizen, and the son of Burkina Faso immigrants with Italian citizenship; he was born and grown up in Milan. The theoretical premises on which this case is based are those reported in victimology literature, it has been chosen for it’s similarity to other cases of xenophobia and because it brings new insights to present notions existing within criminology and applied victimology, (such as concepts of social disorder and social fear), and as such constitutes a significant contribution to this field of study.

How to Train Professionals to Effectively Manage Child Abuse Cases

Despite the increasing number of child psychological, physical and sexual abuse cases, and the subsequent need for interagency interventions, professional knowledge about the dynamics, nature, strengths and difficulties of the integrated response to child abuse is not universal. In addition to this, training programs for the delivery of a multidisciplinary approach to child abuse cases has always received little attention. The purpose of this chapter is to describe the postgraduate training course “Assessment and treatment approach when handling child abuse cases and paedophilia”, developed by the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy), as an example of a university based and multidisciplinary training to child abuse professionals. This program is aimed at assisting graduated communities’ professionals - such as child psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, educators, law enforcement officers, judges and lawyers - to develop evidence based strategies to respond to child abuse. First the training program will be presented, describing contents and methods used to facilitate critical reflection and analysis of practice/policy: lectures, case studies, work-groups and team-building, web-based and experiential learning. Furthermore, the impact on trainee knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors will be described and discussed on the basis of the existing literature. Barriers to multidisciplinary work such as work style and communication differences among professions, attitudes and behaviors toward children, will be also critically discussed.

Teaching Criminology

The field of study (and the teaching) of the criminal sociology presents multiple aspects and shows itself at various levels, the methods to implement for the exploration of the numerous research leads that it conceals are multiple and varied as well. This case, as a rough guide, proposes some modalities of approach in this domain.

Applied Criminology and Forensic Psychiatry

This chapter suggests a theoretical and empirical approach that makes use of an integrated methodology from a criminological, sociological, psychological and psychiatric perspective, in order to analyze the personality of the perpetrator of the crime or to examine a witness in order to assess his credibility. In particular, the Psychiatric expertise pursues the objective of ascertain the mental state of a person in the moment when he committed the fact provided by law as a crime, he is charged, therefore his level of responsibility, or in order to attempt to understand his future behavior considering the evaluation of the possible existence of social dangerousness. After a close observation of the concepts of mental competence, imputability and social dangerousness, the chapter focuses on the analysis of some expert cases, by comparing different methods related to clinical psychology (interview, level test, personality psycho-diagnostic tests that can be used even in the criminological field, defined as applied, to which are attributed practical aims pursued with scientific means. Finally, it points out the importance of providing reliable, coherent and non labeling judgments about the subject who has been submitted to psychiatric expertise. To achieve this aim, the criminologist, with psychiatric or psychological training, has many rudiments at his disposal in order to make well-founded choices, by adopting a non judging scientific behavior, wondering both about the reason of the criminal’s behavior and the help that can be supplied in order to adopt a suitable conduct in future.

The Present Cybercrime

The preponderant role played by the computer means, which is the more and more direct aim of the criminal action through sophisticated computer technologies, incites to reconsider the classical criminological and victimological patterns. In fact, new kinds of criminality linked to the use of sophisticated computer technologies, which are taking up the state agencies in the activities of prevention and repression, have recently assumed aspects of great and worrying importance. So, the need to formulate suitable training course of the personnel of those police branch (Postal and Communication Police of the Italian National Police), specialized in countering the high tech crime, is becoming more and more compulsory.