Italian Criminal Code

Author: Translator: Huang Feng
Editor-in-Chief: Ding Xiaoxuan
Publisher:
Publication Date: 1998-10-01
Features:
Fragment: In 1919, then Justice Minister Ludovico Muraglia appointed a special committee chaired by the renowned criminologist Enrico to prepare for the reform of the criminal code. Based on the theory of the "School of Criminological Positivism," the committee introduced a draft of the new Criminal Code in 1921, commonly known as the " Draft," which faced strong opposition. After extensive discussions among scholars and judges and soliciting opinions from parliamentary committees, a new Criminal Code (commonly known as the "Rocco Code") was formulated. The code was signed into law by Mussolini on October 19, 1930, and came into effect on July 1, 1931. Although the "Rocco Code" was enacted during the fascist era, its effectiveness has endured to this day.
After World War II, Italy enacted a series of laws to mitigate the harsh repressive tone of the "Rocco Code," such as: abolishing the death penalty; declaring that a citizen's lawful response to the abuse of power by public officials does not constitute a crime; changing the objective liability of editors of publications regarding certain crimes to negligence liability; reducing penalties for some crimes and further limiting the scope of cumulative sentencing; revising the systems related to parole, probation, and habitual offenders to be more favorable to convicts, and enacting a more lenient prison law; abolishing Chapter X of the special part, known as the "crime against bloodline" (primarily criminal provisions punishing abortion); and so on. As for the numerous rulings by Italy's Constitutional Court that have invalidated or reinterpreted criminal provisions through constitutional review, they are too numerous to list.
The Italian legislative body also attempted to draft a new Criminal Code to replace the "Rocco Code." As early as 1949, the Italian Ministry of Justice drafted a new criminal code draft, but it faced fierce opposition. The draft proposed on February 24, 1960, to the parliament was shelved again. The new draft proposed on November 19, 1968, was passed by the Senate on July 2, 1971 (limited to the general part), but was significantly revised by the Senate in 1973 and has remained stalled in the Chamber of Deputies to this day.
In the 1970s, Italy's crime situation exhibited new characteristics, with "organized crime" becoming a major issue troubling Italian society. On one hand, as a result of social conflicts escalating, incidents such as explosions, assassinations, and hostage-taking carried out by left-wing and right-wing terrorist organizations such as the "Red Brigades," "New Order," and "Fascist Combat Units" occurred repeatedly. On the other hand, mafia and Camorra-like organized crime groups, which sought huge profits through criminal activities such as drug trafficking and ransom kidnappings, infiltrated the country's political, economic, and judicial sectors, posing a serious threat and harm to social order, public finance, and the physical and mental health of young people.
To address the significant changes in the crime situation, Italy enacted several "emergency laws" during this period to strengthen the crackdown on terrorist and organized crime, such as the Decree Law of December 15, 1979, No. 625, "Emergency Measures for the Defense of Democratic Order and Public Safety," and the Law of September 13, 1982, No. 646, on Combating Mafia Crimes.
In the fight against organized crime, large-scale arrests, investigations, and trials required the coordination of numerous judges, police, and gendarmerie personnel, as well as sufficient prison space. In this context, it became necessary to free criminal justice authorities from the overwhelming number of minor criminal cases and focus their efforts on the main objectives. This led to the emergence of "decriminalization" legislation. The content of "decriminalization" (also known as "non-criminalization") legislation primarily involves transferring some minor crimes to administrative fines and introducing alternative measures such as half-day imprisonment and restrictions on freedom in the criminal execution system. The main representative of this legislation is Law No. 689 of 1981.
Additionally, with the development of modern society, combating high-tech crimes has become one of the key concerns of Italy's criminal lawmakers. It is worth mentioning the Law No. 547 of December 23, 1993, targeting cybercrime, which added a series of provisions in the special part of the Criminal Code to combat crimes that public trust, personal privacy, or property through the use of information technology.