**Abstract**

The focus of the criminological research is on probation and diversion measures applied in metropolitan judicial districts where juvenile deviance and criminal careers are frequent. Presidential Decree 448/1988 measures application in Naples judicial discrict reflects the "juvenile probation " in juvenile ligislation, the problems of the local and urban organized crime context and the lack of penal welfare. The sources of analysis are an experimental sample of minors holders of the probation measure from Juvenile Court's files, three other control sample holding diversion or conviction, the examination of the recidivism rate and criminal relaspe. Both database of the General Criminal Records and the Department of Prison Administration were consulted to monitor further sub-objectives and measures the recidivism rates. The results of the research highlight the risk assessment linked to the path of deviance according to the performance of the child recovery activities implemented by the host and penal communities. Evaluations acquires even more importance if observed after the entry into force of the Law of 28 April 2014 no. 67 introducing in the criminal code and criminal procedure, both the suspension of the trial and the provisions on non-punishment for particular tenuity of the fact (Legislative Decree 16 March 2015 n. 28).

**Keywords:** juvenile delinquency, probation, gangs and careers

#### **1. Introduction**

Juvenile deviance and especially serious deviance is a fracture that is generated not only between the child and the victim, but also between the former and the social community. This happens both if the child is a victim and if he holds the role of offender. In both cases, the society's negligence towards them is called into question.

In Italy, juvenile deviance is treated with a series of measures provided for by the juvenile criminal legislation and by a regulatory framework dating back to 1988 that have as a central objective to avoid that the punitive instrument has first of all a homogeneous character and at the same time produces a criminal sanctioning practice that is characterized as a punitive response that causes further harm to the child.

The judicial authority has as its primary objective the re-education and resocialization of the child in the assumption, not always valid, that the present immaturity can be corrected, i.e. guided towards a development respectful of the limits imposed by civil cohabitation.

More than thirty years have passed since the introduction in Italy of Presidential Decree 448/1988 "Approval of the provisions on the criminal trial of juvenile defendants" which reformed the juvenile trial whose matrix is based on supranational acts1 , basically aimed at making positive pedagogical intervention also with corrective purposes, a function to which gives way to a "cognitive jurisdicional model" [1]. As Pazè says: "the State trials a young person to define his responsability for a crime and, also, to encourage him to change his conduct and to orient his life differently [2].

This objective must be associated with the attempt to settle the conflict that has arisen with the victim, through a process that goes from mediation, to the repair of the damage caused, after internal recognition of the negative value of the offense caused. In the phase, where possible, the minor's family unit comes into play, according to the known method of the *Family group conference*, in which the extended family (including persons deemed significant indicated by the minor) can elaborate the project of the rehabilitation measure and share it with the minor [3].

This contribution will discuss the possible effectiveness of some aspects of the legislation that provides for the juvenile trial in light of the transformations that have affected the phenomenon of juvenile deviance in recent years, taking its cue from a recent sociological research conducted in the jurisdictional district of the city of Naples, the whose characteristic is precisely that of making visible some of the changes that have taken place both in the juvenile universe and in the different local contexts that make the processes of social integration and positive reorientation of deviant behaviors more difficult.

The focus of the research is the institute of suspension of the juvenile process with testing. Among all the measures provided by the criminal justice system for juveniles is the one that - inspired by the U.S. model of juvenile probation where the measure is intended as an instrument of de-prisonment - has a hybrid character. That is, incomplete compared to the US model and equally unequal to the Anglo-Saxon model of diversion.

However, it's a measure abundantly applied by Italian judges, as an instrument that synthesizes the rationale behind the two models, but has its own elaborate identity that characterizes the novelty compared to the afflictive and retributive concept of the penalty present in the Italian criminal justice system of the fifties and sixties of the twentieth century.

The institute enhances the role of the juvenile services of the administration of justice and the unavoidable role of the social welfare services of local authorities. With probation, admissible for all crimes, education enters the process: the subject of the trial is not longer the crime-fact, but the person, we are witnessing the "possibility that in the face of the need for social recovery of the minor, the very realization of the punitive claim may retreat" [4].

The articulation of the contribution is developed by dedicating the following part, in summary form, to sociological and criminological theories that interpret the dynamics of deviance in its various manifestations, identifying the risk factors of "becoming deviant". In the third part we present the regulatory and application system of the Presidential Decree 488/88 with particular to the institution of suspension with probation, regulated by article 28–29 of the decree and taken from art. 27 of Legislative Decree 272/89.

<sup>1</sup> The reference is to the Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice U.N., New York, novembre 28, 1985, also known as the "Beijing Rules", UN Convention on the Rights of the Child of 11/20/89, European Convention on exercise of children's in Strasburg on 25/1/96.

The examination will highlight some limitations and strengths of the measure and will discuss – with reference to empirical evidence – its effectiveness with respect to the objectives and purposes of the regulatory framework. The fourth part will account for the results achieved by the research showing the results of the trial and the methodological system designed to analyze the rates of juvenile relapse and criminal relapse among minors who have been holders of different measures.

Since the recovery of the deviant child passes through the mobilization of personal and environmental resources, an objective of the research has been addressed to the study of the response of the sphere of the legal-criminal and social sub system that are most directly involved in the application of the measures and in the recovery policies, that is the communities belonging to the justice sphere, the circuit of the various professional operators, social services, the communities which they belong to.

The conclusions will highlight the need to reform the regulatory system in some parts and accompany this need with the greater and more intense dissemination of policies to prevent child deviance. They appear to be weaker in some cities due to the retreat of local and community welfare, particularly in those where many juveniles commit crimes of association.
