Guest lecture by John Braithwaite, 2024 Balzan Prizewinner for Restorative Justice
First edition of the International Seminar on Restorative Justice and the Environment, August 2020, published by AJUFE
English translation
The Law No 68 of 22 May 2015 introduced a diversionary procedure enabling the out-of-court settlement of certain minor criminal violations of the Environmental Code (Legislative Decree No 152 of 3 April 2006). This article analyses in depth the various stages of this innovative procedure, placing particular emphasis on its possible legal qualification. The policy functions of the new procedure and its scope of application are also critically assessed. Conclusively, the article concentrates on the new procedure's compliance with the principles of restorative justice. It is sumbitted that this new diversion scheme can be regarded as a form of de facto decriminalisation, based on a bargaining process which sits ad odds with aims of restorative justice.
This paper starts taking note of the contradiction in which imprisonment nowadays is. On the one side, it can claim foundations in science and rationality, which made it an apparently indispensable tool; on the other side, nowadays there is clear evidence of a deep crisis in many respects, humanitarian, ideological and of efficiency. Therefore, in this moment, we are facing a turning point in the Italian policy on crime. The guidelines under which the punitive system may evolve in the future match distinct, but not necessarily alternative, cultural preconditions. There are three conceivable guidelines for the reform: firstly, that of the alternative measures in prison; secondly, that of the measures alternative to imprisonment; finally, the restorative justice. Each of these will be examined in respect of the imprisonment "monoculture".