"L'albero nuovo si piega meglio di quello vecchio". La giustizia "educatrice" per i minori nell'Italia liberale

In Italy, during the liberal period, childhood matter was not perceived as a “only criminal question” but as a constitutional matter. Vittorio Emanuele Orlando realized its moment of development of the “roots of the tree of the national life”. Complex doctrine - Lombroso, Mantegazza, De Sarlo, Maria Montessori, Credaro – lawyer without distinctions of affinity to “tendencies” - Ferriani, Lucchini, Alimena, Majno, Brusa, Guarnieri Ventimiglia, Conti, Stoppato, Sighele – as well as the journalist Poverelli aimed at a “teaching justice”, due to the failure of the repressive one. Topics-matters developed in connection with the reconsideration of the criminal legality and the centrality of the prevention for underage people not guilty but dangerous and under critical conditions: a corrective open-ended measure, the stronger intervention of the State towards family, school, work, corrective and punitive institution, with the common code-word “reform the reformers”.