Outside the Sea of Moral Panic. Building the Baby Gangs in Italy

This paper will focus on the way juvenile deviance, focused on the alleged "babby gang" problem, became a major issue in Italian politics, so that in September 2023, the so called decreto-Caivano (Caivano bill), produced a major shift within the Italian Juvenile justice system. One of the less punitivist system in the Western World, as it is still inspired by the prescription of "not interrupting the growth of minors", became punitivst, with a plus 80% of juvenile inmates serving sentences inside Juvenile Prisons.

This paper will analyse the way juvenile deviance was brought on stage by public actors such as politician in search of consent, who benefitted from securitarian stances inside Italian society, and the media looking for audience. In particular, a TV series called "Mare Fuori" (sea outside), set in Naples, provided, during the Covid pandemic, a spectacularized view of juvenile deviance, distant from reality, that triggered newspapers and talk show to discuss about baby gangs. Empirical material will be used to discuss this paper. Interviews to social workers, social cares, judges and magistrates, as well as text analysis of journal articles, will be analysed to demonstrate how a problem that did not exist became a capital issue of Italian politics. Moreover, the paper will argue that the construction of juvenile deviance as a social problem is related to the origin of many juveniles involved, who are either "Italians without citizenship", that is they are either children or grandchildren of migrants who are not entitled to become citizens, or unaccompanied minors who have no social protection at all, also due to the welfare policies enforced by the current government.