The far-right government of Giorgia Meloni is going to put into practice the heavy hand that it has always promised its voters to establish order. For example, it will be a criminal offense punishable by up to two years in prison to cut roads or railways, even peacefully, something common in union or environmental protests and which until now carried an administrative sanction. It will also be passively resisting an agent in prison or in a migrant reception center. For all these reasons, the opposition has already dubbed the decree “anti-Gandhi.”
Foreigners in an irregular situation will also have more difficulty accessing a mobile phone to stay in touch with their families, because they will be asked for a residence permit to buy a telephone card, with the threat of closing the store for up to a month if it doesn’t. It’s all in the security decree, a large package of measures that creates up to 20 new criminal or aggravating offenses and increases the years in prison. The norm was already approved by the Chamber of Deputies on September 18 and all that remains is for it to pass through the Senate, where the Government wants it to have full priority. On Monday and Wednesday of last week there were already demonstrations by the opposition and unions, who consider it “liberticidal” and “simple propaganda” of little practical effect, but an exhibition of “ideological fury.”
Voices of unusual vehemence have been raised from the judicial sphere, such as that of one of the prosecutors of Naples, Fabrizio Vanorio, a member of the progressive Democratic Magistracy association, who said of the decree: “It provides for technically fascist norms. If approved, it would return to an authoritarian criminal law similar to that of the Mussolini years or, to give a more modern example, that of Orbán’s Hungary.”
In any case, these types of measures are what the far-right Government believes its electorate expects. Meloni thus waves one of its most recognizable flags, order and security. In fact, almost the first legal initiative with which it debuted in 2022, to give a sign of the path to follow, was the so-called law ravewhich punished anyone who organized musical parties in places that were not their property with sentences of three to six years in prison, as they were usually held in open fields or abandoned warehouses. The long gestation of a great security decree that would tighten the screws on all the fronts that make up the catalog of priorities of the Italian extreme right began. From protests, to immigrants, cannabis light or the squatters.
Furthermore, a symbol of the most extreme demands, one of the League’s old obsessions has crept into the process: chemical castration for sexual offenders. Matteo Salvini’s populist party has managed to get approval for at least the formation of a technical commission to study a possible proposal to inhibit the sexual impulse of convicts, using drugs, as long as they accept it voluntarily. If so, it would entail a conditional suspension of the sentence. It is a measure that is applied in Russia, Poland and some Scandinavian countries, but whose effectiveness is also under discussion. It is not likely that this will go beyond being discussed in a commission, but it is proof of the issues that The League introduces into the public debate and this simple step was already celebrated by Salvini in this way on social networks: “Victory!” They have others on the list. The last one, recover mandatory military service. Last week they made two parliamentary proposals.
Both the Democratic Party (PD) and the rest of the opposition and several jurists have already assured that it is unconstitutional and anachronistic to apply corporal punishment. What’s more, when La Liga, which has proclaimed it since 2002, tried again in 2019, the current Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio, a magistrate then outside of politics, said it was a “return to the Middle Ages.” So that trip to the past was not made. Now yes.
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Criminalize protests
A good part of the decree, the most controversial, focuses on toughening the law by tightening penalties throughout the area of protest demonstrations. The first Italian union, CGIL, has denounced that “it is a shame to introduce rules designed to indiscriminately punish those who express their disagreement with the Government or demonstrate to defend a job.” Participating in road or railway blockades can mean a month in prison, but if it is done in a collective mobilization it will range from six months to two years. But this is only part of it.
Also, thinking for example of the protests that have occurred against high-speed trains or the Strait of Messina bridge, the decree introduces an aggravating circumstance, which increases the penalties by up to a third, if the violence or threats to an agent are carried out “in order to prevent the completion of a public work or strategic infrastructure.” In addition, the penalties are increased, which will now range from one and a half to six years in prison, for the crime of damage during a protest if there is violence against people or threats. On the other hand, police officers will be able to carry weapons without a license when they are off duty, such as a revolver, pistol or long gun.
But the reference to Gandhi is also due to another measure, the punishment of “passive resistance” as a method of protest in prisons, but also in migrant reception centers. This last article establishes penalties of one to five years in prison for anyone who “participates in a revolt through acts of violence or threats or resistance to the execution of orders issued,” in groups of three or more people. And it is emphasized that “behaviors of passive resistance also constitute acts of resistance.” It is an initiative that comes in the midst of great tension in the prisons, where protests are taking place due to an emergency situation: they are decaying facilities, they are saturated (61,840 inmates for 46,929 places), and so far this year there have been 72 suicides.
Pregnant, to jail
That is why the increase in prison crimes is also criticized, with a system that no longer works. What’s more, the new decree ends with the exception that pregnant women or women with children under one year old do not go to prison. When it is approved, they must enter it. It is one of several measures made with irregular immigration in mind. This one in particular is specifically designed for female pickpockets who practice petty theft, for whom this exception allows them to be arrested again and again without further consequences. These people are also the declared target of another new aggravating circumstance, that a crime is committed “inside or in the vicinity of a railway or subway station”, or inside the carriages. The subway and stations in Rome or Milan have become a hotbed of crime that frequently appears in the media.
Irregular immigrants are also the explicit target of another measure designed to complicate their lives, specifically, hindering the possibility of communicating with their families: to sell a SIM phone card to a non-EU foreigner, they must present a residence permit. If a store doesn’t do this, it risks being out of business for five days to a month. Cáritas and other organizations that work with migrants have shown their concern about a measure that they consider “discriminatory” and will affect “the right to communicate with one’s own family.”
As for squatters, the decree provides for penalties of two to seven years in prison for anyone who occupies a property or prevents access to the owner, and this includes both homes and garages, terraces or patios. An emergency procedure is established to vacate the property and it will be done ex officio if the owner is a person incapable due to age or illness.
Another front that has aroused strong criticism is the one that ends with the 2016 legalization of so-called cannabis. lightwith a percentage of THC, a psychoactive substance, less than 0.2%. The new decree equates it to other drugs. The problem is that in these eight years an important business has flourished around this product: there are 800 companies that grow it and 1,500 are in charge of its transformation. They have a turnover of 500 million and employ 11,000 people. It was supposedly an expanding sector. But the League wanted to ban even the use of the marijuana leaf drawing for advertising purposes, a proposal that has finally fallen out of the decree.
