Bad boys. A fair trial rather than an exemption from liability: perhaps fleeting, perhaps not unjust

The issue of criminal liability for minors is problematic, but does not appear to be a scandal in itself. Rather, it is unclear whether, and to what extent, it might have a deterrent effect. Street priests, social and community workers, and the majority of sociologists – with some exceptions and differences in approach to the issue – are convinced that establishing a new threshold for criminal responsibility will have no remedial effect on the scourge of youth gangs or on the numerous cases of deviant behaviour by adolescents or those little more than children involved in criminal acts that provoke a mixture of compassion, insecurity and alarm. The widespread use of knives, the formation of social networks geared towards the most aggressive forms of disorder, illegality as a method, and the systematic undermining of peace and coexistence in large cities, in the provinces, in neighbourhoods – not only those affected by urban decay – accompanied by a specific criminal vernacular and deviant, out-of-control behaviour, cannot be combated by a law, introduced by the centre-right government, which lowers the age at which those who commit offences against people and property can be prosecuted. The manifesto of this progressive stance is that ‘there are no bad children’.

The premise is generous; it expresses trust and love, but it is debatable, even in light of the modernist and ‘liberating’ implications of the thought and practice of Freud and the various schools of depth psychology of the last century. The state of human innocence, prior to civilisation and its consequences, is above all a great Rousseauian myth, one of the radical and romantic Enlightenment – a myth as inspired as it is controversial. However, the problem is thus misframed. The manifesto should perhaps be rephrased: ‘there are no morally culpable children, only irresponsible children’. Childhood and adolescence that lie outside and in opposition to the prevailing social norm—codified by law and common morality—are the result of a phenomenon that is now irreversible: the disappearance of the ‘old world’, with its so-called values, which have always been more or less authentic but for centuries proved sufficiently resilient to the worst impulsive outbursts of early adolescence: aristocratic behaviour and a liberal education, a sense of religion, understood as a spiritual bond and respect for forces immeasurable to human behaviour—the famous ‘fear of God’—and observance of authority, hierarchy and the integrated community, starting with the family and school, which were powerful and almost exclusive vehicles of integration. In the vast postmodern world, all this emphasis on values has gone to the dogs, and one need not necessarily be a prude or an old fogey to realise – an obvious and widely accepted notion – that subjective emotion, its massification and infinite replicability through images and sounds, now devoid of any ethical centre, has replaced objective rationality and its mechanisms of self-control. Be free, but precisely for that reason, be aware that you are also responsible, and that responsibility is not the smoke and mirrors of a benevolent or complacent judgement from the adult world – ‘children are never bad’ – but an objective fact, a code that makes the consequences of your actions clear.

Governments and parliaments do not seem to possess sufficient cultural and moral authority to compensate for the loss of the centre (a well-known and much-debated conservative or reactionary trope), the crisis in the family and the school system, and the enchanted, loving, tick-tock, of mass psychology in the era of surging technologies and their social intrusion into every aspect of life from the very earliest years of existence. The horse has bolted, and for compelling reasons, this may be a common assessment regardless of differing solutions. Banning platforms for those under a certain age is a project that is probably as short-lived as it is well-intentioned. To establish that if you form a gang of fifteen- or sixteen-year-olds and take matters into your own hands – for the purpose of robbery, assault and harassment against others – you will be entitled to a fair trial rather than an angelic exemption from responsibility, this too is perhaps short-lived. But it might not be unjust.