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È noto come tradizionalmente il genere maschile venga considerato uno specifico fattore di rischio per la delinquenza giovanile. Negli ultimi anni, tuttavia, alcuni studi hanno mostrato un aumento della manifestazione di comportamenti devianti nel genere femminile, tanto da far ipotizzare che il divario tra i due sessi si stia riducendo. Al fine di indagare il ruolo che le differenze di genere hanno nella devianza giovanile, sono stati analizzati i dati dell’International Self- Report Delinquency Study 2 e 3, selezionando un campione di giovani con età compresa tra i 12 ed i 16 anni. La ricerca si è focalizzata sul comparare le differenze di genere rispetto al tipo di condotta deviante, all’insorgenza della stessa, alle sue conseguenze ed alla probabilità di vittimizzazione. Le differenze nel comportamento antisociale tra maschi e femmine variano da un paese all'altro. Tuttavia, il genere maschile ha ancora dimostrato di essere un fattore di rischio specifico per la delinquenza giovanile, in particolare per i reati gravi. Dal punto di vista cronologico, la delinquenza giovanile aumenta con l'aumentare dell'età, mentre il rapporto tra delinquenza maschile e femminile non cambia significativamente con l'età. Confrontando le due ondate di ISRD, abbiamo notato una convergenza tra i generi. Male gender is a well-known risk factor for juvenile delinquency. In recent years several studies have reported a steady increase in the involvement of girls in deviant behavior, suggesting that differences in deviant behavior between males and females might be reducing. To investigate possible gender differences in the development of juvenile delinquency, we analyzed data from the International Self-Report Delinquency Study 2 (ISRD2) and 3 (ISRD-3), from which we selected a sample of young people aged between 12 and 16 years. We focused on the differences between males and females with regard to the type and gravity, the onset of deviant behavior, the probability of being apprehended by the police and the probability of victimization, comparing the two waves of the study. Differences in antisocial behavior between males and females varied among different countries. Nevertheless, male gender proved to be a specific risk factor for juvenile delinquency, particularly for serious crimes. From the chronological standpoint, juvenile delinquency increased with age, while the ratio between male and female delinquency did not change significantly with age. Comparing the two waves of ISRD, we noticed a convergence between males and females.

This contribution defines ‘Megan’s Laws’ as ‘message laws’, that is, those penal laws that carry a message not only coherent with the cultural impetus supporting their adoption but also anticipating something that is not (yet) acceptable to manifest openly in Western politics. First, we describe how this message is generally considered more important than the actual results produced by these laws in terms of efficiency, and how it also intervenes on issues causing waves of moral and perpetual panic. Second, we observe how, in the specific case of sex offender registration and notification laws, two important messages are at stake: that sex offenders deserve perpetual punitivity and that the community has the right/duty to control their behaviours. Finally, we suggest that ‘message laws’ can be considered a wake-up call on maintaining the democratic project.

In recent years, the public discourse on gender has expanded to include criminological themes, giving rise to a slippery plot that seems to have monopolized media attention, generating social alarm and strengthening stereotyped dichotomies, which, obviously in a more complex form, are visible also in the academic debate. In this context, the article aims to 1) check whether female victimization and female crime, subject to social alarm, have actually increased, 2) conduct a brief review of the literature on the «virgin and vamps» dichotomy that connotes public discourse when it intends to represent the women who committed crimes but also the women who are victims, 3) highlight the relevance of this dichotomy at the academic level, where opposing positions are confronted in a lively debate identified by accusing each other of generating moral panic and making methodological errors, and 4) identify some lines of research suitable to enrich the debate, considering gender both as «structure» and as «interaction».

This book directly explores the question of why contemporary society is so fascinated with violence and crime. The Fascination with Violence in Contemporary Society posits that the phenomenon is, in part, because we have all become consumers of the sublime: An intense and strongly ambiguous emotion which is increasingly commodified. Through the experience of violence and the sense of disorientation that accompanies it, we obsessively seek out moments of intensified existence. Equally, crime continues to speak to the depths of the collective unconscious, questioning us about our transience and the model of society we wish to live in. Binik proposes that this is why the reaction to violence has become a tool with which to express and take ownership of a desire for social cohesion. This book uses interviews with viewers, dark tourists, collectors and others to further interrogate this social trend. Many of these are participants in the four key case studies explored within the study: Emotional pathways while watching a true-crime TV series, the trend of dark tourism, murderabilia collecting and the fanaticism of (and for) Anders Breivik. This book seeks to answer one of the most pressing cultural trends of the modern age and fill in a gap in the criminological literature on the subject.

In Italy, as in many other countries, diversification in social campaigns against gender-based violence is slowly leading to a decrease in the use of images of physically abused women. Though such images are widely criticized, there are no empirical studies that concretely confirm their (in)effectiveness. In this context, the main hypothesis of the research presented in this article is that the representation of a woman as the victim of violence triggers strong emotions. However, compared with other new-generation campaigns, such representations are associated with a lower level of engagement. The study compared six social campaigns: two using images of women where one portrays a battered woman; two with images of men; one depicting a couple; and one that addresses the whole of society. The campaigns were included in a questionnaire administered to 386 people who assessed and compared them from the point of view of their emotional impact, and their ability to inspire thought and provoke action. The article's research hypothesis is ultimately not proven; i.e., the image of the woman as victim of violence incites more of a reaction, makes one think more, and is associated with a greater level of engagement.

Within the law n. 67/2014, the Italian legislation introduced a new kind of pre-trial probation. After a description of the innovative aspects of the law and an analysis of the context in which it wasapproved, an evaluation study (SWOT analysis) conducted in the city of Milan is presented. Based on 23 interviews to stakeholders, the research shows Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats in the application of the new measure. In the light of research findings, the paper proposes a vademecum with priority actions to improve the efficacy of the law.

Within the framework of a progressive rapprochement between literature and criminology, the intent of the essay is to present the concept of "smarginatura", closely connected to that of "frantumaglia" - both created by the writer Elena Ferrante - and to reconnect them to the scientific interest for the discontinuities of deviant life cycles. The literary talent of Ferrante in the description of episodes of "smarginatura", in which the references are lost and the existential chaos explodes is useful on the one hand, to better define the criminological knowledge on the path of the desisters, from other, to work with offenders facilitating the recognition of the potential of some disorienting experiences. More precisely, the hypothesis is that "smarginatura" can lead to abandoning a deviant self and to experimenting with a different narration of oneself.

True crime, at the crossroads of narrative, documentary and art, is crime fact that looks like crime fiction. Through the case study of Making a Murderer (2015), the intent of this paper is to provide a theoretical framework for this genre, considering it as a vehicle for social transformation. More precisely, by adopting the perspective of Victor Turner, its goal is to focus attention on the delicate intersection of two levels: The sacred and official legal procedure (the liminal) and the critical, artistic and parallel interests of the true crime (the liminoid).

Dark tourism is the act of travel to tourist sites associated with death, suffering or the seemingly macabre (Stone 2006, 146). This phenomenon is object of increasing attention from the scientific community, which has mainly focused on two interpretive keys. Indeed, there is 1) a more established literature that considers the dark tourism as a form of «collective effervescence», to approach the sacred and sublime dimension of death, 2) a set of contributions that have dealt with the process of commodification involving some experiences and destinations of dark tourism. It is assumed that the condition of both can be identifed in the conception of dark tourism as a carnival experience of liminality and some possible research developments are proposed.

The present paper reviews the history, the principal characteristics, the recent evolutions and the objectives of the international multi-centric study on juvenile self-report delinquency and victimization called ISRD, and describes the contribution of Italian criminology to the project. The most important international results of the first two waves of the research (ISRD 1 and ISRD2), and the innovations introduced in the planning of the third wave (ISRD3) are also described: The collection of data has been concluded in Italy, but not in all the 35 countries participating to the study.

This article illustrates how Little Red Riding Hood has been used in a workshop conducted in prison aimed at a mixed audience of students participating in a Social Work Degree Course and detainees. First of all, it presents concepts at the core of the didactic part of the workshop. Second, the methodological path that has characterized the experiential side of the seminar is illustrated. Finally, one of the results is discussed: a version of Little Red Riding Hood written in a participatory manner by inmates and students together.

Considerando la narrativa come spazio discorsivo in cui si costruisce l'idea di delitto e di soggetto femminile, come scrittura che svela l'immaginario locale e globale intorno alla donna, il lavoro si focalizza sulla rappresentazione letteraria della donna come artefice di un crimine nel senso giuridico del termine. Si propone un corpus non omogeneo e neppure esauriente, ma si rappresentativo di tematiche e linguaggi letterari che tracciano la presenza e le possibili tipologie di donne criminali nella letteratura contemporanea italiana e ispano-americana del XXI secolo.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, criminology has attempted to identify ecological factors affecting the rise or the decrease in crime rates. In this framework, concepts of “social disorganization”, “collective efficacy”, and “social capital” have been coined. Particularly in recent years, the perspective of “social capital” has attracted the interest of criminologists, but, despite the numerous studies conducted in this field, some issues remain open. Firstly, studies conducted outside the US context are few. Secondly, even in North American studies, there is a disagreement over the impact of social capital on crime, in particular on violent crimes. The results of this study, conducted on data obtained by the ISRD3 survey in 23 countries around the world, and addressed to 7th, 8th, and 9th grade students (N = 55,201), try to address such issue: they show a negative correlation between social capital and self-reported crime also outside North America, both for violent crimes and general delinquency. The preventive role played by social capital on crime is also confirmed considering the self-reported data on victimization.

This article considers music as a precipitate of the universes of meaning attributed to deviance and crime in a certain period of history and in a specific social context. From this perspective, the «canzoni delle mala», sung by various artists from Milan in the 50-70's, are analysed. These songs transfigured the violence and social unrest of the period of «ligera» (a specific kind of criminality in Milan), anticipating the birth of the «canzone d'autore». Two rethorics are highlighted in this process: the romanticization of crime and the importance of authenticity in the performances. The songs "La povera Rosetta" and "Ma mì", which represent two different typologies of authenticity (respectively a modernist and a constructivist version of the concept) are considered as case studies. The analysis shows that, even if there are different kinds of «canzoni della mala», those romantic and «authentic» songs expressed the desire to resist the process of industrialisation, and tried to introduce a new «taste» in music

1. Prospettiva teorica. Il lavoro si focalizza sull’attuale fascino che il crimine esercita sulla collettività, prestando particolare attenzione al ruolo giocato dalle emozioni nel dare forma alle contemporanee narrative di avvicinamento al crimine. L’attraversamento di quattro casi di studio mediante l’indagine empirica presenta e discute le seguenti ipotesi: - Il crimine e l’esperienza emotiva del sublime. Tracciando un parallelismo tra il sublime (Burke), lo stato di awe (Haidt&Keltner) e il perturbante (Freud), l’esperienza emotiva che suscita la fascinazione per il crimine si definisce come segue: è un’emozione ossimorica, che si esprime nella forma dell’attrazione e della repulsione; essa ci pone di fronte al senso del limite e al potere associato alla componente distruttiva dell’essere umano, generando in noi uno stato di spaesamento e indecifrabilità, ossia un tentativo di comprendere un gesto “altro” che esula dalla nostra quotidianità. - Il sublime come passione per il Reale. La fascinazione per il crimine, da una prospettiva lacaniana, si connetterebbe al contemporaneo poiché nella società attuale la sfera del Simbolico si è notevolmente ristretta a vantaggio dell'Immaginario, creando una situazione di squilibrio, compensato dalla tensione verso il Reale. Il Sublime associato al crimine può assumere dunque i tratti di una “passione per il Reale”, svincolata dal Simbolico e veicolata da un Immaginario che la irretisce ma non arriva a contenerla. - Mercificazione ed effervescenza nella società contemporanea. Il processo di avvicinamento al crimine può essere inoltre paragonato all’esperienza sublime del carnevalesco (Presdee). Il Carnevale presenta due facce. Da un lato, sembra che la mercificazione abbia condotto l’individuo a vivere il crimine come esperienza per “consumare” delle emozioni (Illouz). Dall’altro, nell’esperienza carnevalesca sembra si possa intravedere anche una forma di effervescenza collettiva (Durkheim), un tentativo di problematizzare l’esperienza del sacro (Caillois, Bataille). - Le regole del sentimento. In un’ottica interazionista, l’idea è che il sublime costituisca uno stato emotivo culturalmente determinato. L’ emotion work è impiegato dall’individuo per adattarsi a specifiche “regole del sentire”, che stabiliscono fino a che punto è lecito “godere” del crimine e oltre quale soglia è ritenuto inopportuno. 2. Lo sviluppo del percorso di ricerca: i quattro casi di studio. a) La trasmissione televisiva Quarto Grado: Sulla base di 15 interviste rivolte agli spettatori e sull’analisi del contenuto di 12 puntate, si propone: un’analisi dell’esperienza emotiva del sublime adottando la prospettiva degli spettatori, una ricostruzione delle regole del sentimento, la presentazione delle strategie comunicative impiegate dalla trasmissione, una discussione sullo shift dal sublime al risentimento. b) Il fenomeno del dark tourism: Sulla base di 15 interviste rivolte a dark tourist e organizzatori, si procede con lo schema di analisi del capitolo precedente. c) Il mercato di murderabilia: Sulla base di 10 interviste rivolte a collezionisti si propone una disamina dei seguenti temi: la mercificazione, la celebrity culture, il contatto con il sacro sinistro, le regole del sentimento, i tentativi di contenimento del mercato attraverso la Legge. d) Il fanatismo per Anders Breivik: Sulla base del Manifesto steso da Breivik e dei siti dei suoi sostenitori si propone l’analisi della strage in qualità di performance che ha consentito a Breivik di spettacolarizzare il suo stesso gesto, di favorire lo shift dal sublime all’attrazione per la sua figura e di ottenere consenso.

Vengono riportati la storia, l’evoluzione recente, le principali caratteristiche e gli obiettivi dello studio multicentrico internazionale sulla delinquenza autoriportata e sulla vittimizzazione giovanile denominato International Self-Report Delinquency Study, ed in particolare viene descritto il contributo dei criminologi italiani al progetto. Sono sinteticamente riferiti i più importanti risultati, a livello internazionale, delle prime due edizioni dello studio (ISRD1 e ISRD2), e le innovazioni introdotte in occasione della terza edizione (ISRD3), la cui esecuzione è terminata in Italia ma non ancora in tutti i 35 paesi coinvolti nella ricerca The present paper reviews the history, the principal characteristics, the recent evolutions and the objectives of the international multi-centric study on juvenile self-report delinquency and victimization called ISRD, and describes the contribution of Italian criminology to the project. The most important international results of the first two waves of the research (ISRD 1 and ISRD2), and the innovations introduced in the planning of the third wave (ISRD3) are also described: The collection of data has been concluded in Italy, but not in all the 35 countries participating to the study.

The article discusses the topic of fascination for crime from a cultural point of view. It's focused on two aspects: The emotional dimension and the role it assumes in contemporary society. From an emotional standpoint, it is assumed that the "sublime" constitutes the emotional experience to be placed in the center of the process, furthermore, the article draws a parallel between the concepts of the "sublime" (Burke), "awe" (Haidt & Keltner) and the "uncanny" (Freud). Regarding the role played by the fascination for crime and the sublime in contemporary society, the article provides a reflection on the concepts of enjoyment, commodification and collective effervescence, inspired by the thought of Lacan and Maffesoli.

L’article traite de la question des motivations pour le tourisme sombre, du point de vue émotionnel. Il est supposé, en particulier, que le « sublime » représente l’expérience émotionnelle d’être placé au centre du processus de la fascination. L’analyse proposée ici crée un parallèle entre les notions de « sublime », de « awe » et de l’« inquiétante étrangeté ». Deux dimensions sont en outre identifiées pour orienter la recherche empirique et relever la présence de cet état émotionnel chez les dark tourists.