Italy approves law to help young people leave mafia families

Italy has approved a national law aimed at helping children and young adults leave families tied to mafia groups before they are drawn into organised crime. Al Jazeera reported that the Senate gave final approval Wednesday to the Free to Choose, or Liberi di Scegliere, bill.

The measure matters because Italian prosecutors and anti-mafia officials have long struggled with crime networks built around blood ties. Under the law, people younger than 25, along with relatives who care for them, can be moved away from their home region and given support to build a life outside the control of a clan, according to Al Jazeera.

What the law allows

Al Jazeera reported that eligible young people may receive housing, schooling, job training, psychological help and assistance toward independent living. In some cases, authorities may also provide new identities.

The programme is designed to protect people who want to leave a mafia environment, rather than to turn them into witnesses for prosecutors, according to Al Jazeera. The law gives priority to keeping mothers and children together when the mother agrees to cut ties with the criminal organisation.

If that is not possible, a court may place a child with an approved foster family or in protected accommodation, Al Jazeera reported. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni described the measure as “a new prevention tool” to sit alongside police and court action.

Meloni said the state would offer “an alternative of freedom” to people born into mafia families who do not want to become mafiosi. She said children, young people and women would receive protection to pursue a “free, honest and safe life elsewhere.”

Why family links matter

Italy remains home to several major mafia groups, including Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, the Camorra around Naples and the Calabria-based ’Ndrangheta, Al Jazeera reported. Family inheritance plays a particularly strong role in the ’Ndrangheta, where sons of senior members may be expected to take on clan authority, sometimes as teenagers.

Those family bonds have also made the organisation hard for investigators to infiltrate, according to Al Jazeera. A member who cooperates with authorities may have to implicate parents, siblings, uncles or cousins.

Al Jazeera reported that this has limited the reach of Italy’s system of pentiti, or mafia insiders who give evidence in exchange for protection or reduced sentences. Even when arrests and trials remove older leaders, younger relatives have often stepped into their place.

Origins and opposition

The law grew out of an experimental programme started in Calabria by Roberto Di Bella, who became president of the juvenile court in Reggio Calabria around 2011, according to Al Jazeera. Di Bella had seen children charged with crimes resembling those committed by their fathers and grandfathers and concluded that punishment alone was not breaking the cycle.

Under that programme, courts could temporarily remove children from especially dangerous ’Ndrangheta households and relocate them outside Calabria, Al Jazeera reported. Teachers, social workers and psychologists then helped them continue school and experience life beyond clan control.

The initiative drew criticism from some politicians, commentators and Catholic Church figures who said it attacked family life and punished children for their parents’ crimes, according to Al Jazeera. Mafia figures also threatened people connected to the programme, including a warning sent to Di Bella by an imprisoned boss.

Supporters argued that some children in mafia households were already exposed to violence, pressure and criminal indoctrination, Al Jazeera reported. Di Bella said some mothers from ’Ndrangheta families secretly asked him to help remove their sons from Calabria because they feared the boys would be recruited, killed or imprisoned.

Don Luigi Ciotti, an anti-mafia priest and campaigner, welcomed the law and said it brought “enormous joy” because of the protection it offers people leaving mafia environments. Chiara Colosimo, president of the Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission, said the law grew from “suffering transformed into responsibility” and marked “the victory of freedom.”

This story draws on original reporting from Al Jazeera.