The murders sparked protests in Messina, Rome and other Italian cities, including Bologna, on Wednesday night. Further events are planned on Thursday.
In March, Giorgia Meloni’s government approved a draft law which for the first time introduced a legal definition of femicide in criminal law, punishing it with life in prison while increasing sentences for crimes including stalking, sexual violence and “revenge porn”.
The law followed the strong public reaction to the killing of Giulia Cecchettin, a 22-year-old student who was murdered by her former boyfriend, Filippo Turetta, in November 2023. Turetta was sentenced to life in prison in December.
But it will take the people who commit violence against women off the street. There are times when prison is not about rehabilitation its simply about removing danger.
Isolation is the one part of the carceral system that does have some effect, but I don’t think it’s the best way to achieve even that part.
I guess I don’t know the previous situation in Italy with regards to this issue. Was there a large number of people getting caught for these offenses and then released? Because killing someone and locking them up for 20 years is basically just as good from the perspective of separating victim and offender. It would be better to focus on consistent investigation and capture than on harsher penalties.
Or on programs that work to prevent violence in the first place. But we would only pursue those if we cared more about helping potential victims than about hurting offenders. That doesn’t seem to be the priority for most people.
They’re not looking to prevent violence they’re looking to isolate violence.
Prison has never and will never be a deterrence
Their point was money is being spent. Is it not best spent on actually stopping this from happening?
We know that this isn’t actually about that and prison is not either. That’s not the point. The point is people are fighting for the wrong things if they actually want to help.
Only after they do it. It doesn’t prevent anything.
This meme about prison being for “rehabilitation” needs to go the way of the dodo.
Life isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, kids. Sometimes the only way to stop somebody from doing something bad is to threaten them with, gasp, a punishment.
Sad this needs to be spelled out for most of you, but it really puts into perspective the kind of person that frequents these forums.
I’m just glad most of you don’t have a greater impact on the world.
So murdering people hasn’t been met with punishment in Italy before? That’s news to me.
Of course it has. I seriously doubt that these murderers were calculating their prison sentence and telling themselves "Oh, if I only get 15 years in prison, that’s not too bad. "
If the goal of prison isn’t to turn criminals into better citizens, then why not put all prisoners in a hard labor camp?
That’s slavery.
You were the one saying that prisons should be harsher in the first place. 🙄
Beware of the monkey’s paw.
It is legal for prisoners to be enslaved - perhaps you missed that little gotcha in the amendment.
We weren’t talking about what is legal.
I’m going to ignore you now. You people are insufferable.
Sadly for you the statistic show increasing punishment does not actually work to prevent them from committing these crimes. It can work for some crimes, but not this kind, and also only up to a certain point.
Sadly this needs to be spelt out to you, but if we’re spending resources on something we should make an attempt to use it as efficiently as possible. We have studies that show the efficacy of different types and degrees of punishment, as well as rehabilitation methods. Rehabilitation can get some people (not all) to become contributing members of society, where they’ll actually be a benefit instead of a cost.