Clashes, stabbing, devastation, drug dealing. Baby gangs and groups of “maranza”, with second generations or new immigrants. And again, widespread violence and bullying in schools … involves all Italian cities the alarm for attacks and micro crime by Giovanissimi. Marginalization, school abandonment, discomfort raised during the pandemic, among the causes. And the strategy to face the phenomenon passes from the repression of crimes, but also by help with social interventions.
They try to stop them by placing resources, but it is like emptying the ocean with a spoon. They are the boys with the gun, with the “switchblade” that bloody the pages of chronicles: the recent massacre of Monreale, author a 19 -year -old boy, three dead killed; The urban guerrilla warfare at Don Bosco, a Roman belt, with a gang of North Africans destroying everything and makes eight injured; the clash between Maranza, stabbed between immigrants, in the Milanese district of City Life; Then in Bologna assault on the station, as well as in Rovigo.
Yet the Caivano Bis decree is a signal: 180 million to redevelop the suburbs of seven cities in three years. One detail: the figures come from the cohesion funds, those that the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen would like to divert to finance the rearmament of the 27 EU members. To see the one against the youth bands well is a war.
However, reading the numbers is a lost conflict. And not because there is no attention, on the contrary: the government has taken into account 1.5 million euros to finish the speakers and there are at least four bonuses for the most disadvantaged families (only for the single and universal check, 2024 data of social security itineraries, there were 19.8 billion to six million families for a total of 9.8 million children). The problem is that the phenomenon expands with wildfire. First vehicle of propagation, social networks.
The impetuous growth has been in the post-circle: An misunderstood sense of aggressive socialization, the amplification of violent emulative gestures, the demanding emerging in the second-terrace generations of Italian children children of immigrants, the media incitement that the trapper with their songs have made are an explosive mixture and the cultivation broth of two new phenomena: i maranza that are a “ethnic” re-edition of the rude key that opposed the rude to the rude ones Paninari of the eighties, as well as the Under 20 gangs. They have a common denominator: they are an armed boys.
To understand what is the trigger of this suburban violence that holds entire communities hostage, it is better to give ear to texts like this: “You have problems, either I get them or beat you / bring the knives and also the iron / we will pay everything to hell”. Or again: “We have to fight to us, / I keep the mind Loca, / bad vida Loca, dwarf / I think it is up to us to fight”.
He composes them and sings them Zaccaria Mouhib, 23 years old Italian-Marocchino of Lecco. The name of art and baby gang: it has a definitive sentence for two years and nine months for a shooting in via De Tocqueville in Milan, in the Corso Como area.
Baby Gang, with hundreds of thousands of followers, is at the top of the rankings like Simba La Rue -At the century Mohamed Lamine Saida, 22 year old Italian-Tunisian-his friend definitively sentenced to three years and nine months for the so-called feud of the trapper-violent evolution of the rappers-arrested three weeks ago in Barcelona and waiting for extradition. Their “angry rhymes” are the soundtrack of violence prohibited to the major. Explains the child neuropsychiatrist Maurizio Pincherle of the Polytechnic University of the Marche: «By now the border between self -harm and offense to the other is overcome: these guys have anaffective features, as they are victims in the same way they become executioners. It would be to be investigated if, being digital natives, the abuse of electronic supports has not changed its brain structures. Certainly the obsessive repetition of scenes of violence on social networks and the very weakening relational ability are sparning factors of violence “.
In any case, the statistics are merciless. The Espad® Italy 2023 report of the Institute of Clinical Physiology of the National Research Council of Pisa (CNR-IFC) exhibits these distressing: about 40 percent of high school students, between 15 and 19 years old, participated in Zuff or Rissse in 2023 (latest available data), equal to about 990 thousand children. The increase compared to the latest monitoring (2019 therefore in pre-dashdown era) is 7 percent. They are more males (46 percent) than girls (34 percent) to perform violent actions. But even among females the phenomenon is in significant increase.
The most complete study on this phenomenon – dates back to 2022 – is that of the Transcrime Research Group (Inter-University Research Center of the Catholic University of Milan, Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna and the University of Perugia, directed by Professor Ernesto Ugo Savona with Marco Dugato and Edoardo Villa), who on behalf of the Central Directorate of the State Police has studied the phenomenon thoroughly. It is confirmed that youth gangs are widespread throughout Italy and are growing. The active groups three years ago were 1,909, but according to the latest projections, today they would be 2,500. The crimes they perform are in the majority brawls and devastations (73 percent) follow bullying, vandalistic episodes, thefts and robberies, drug dealing, the frequency of these crimes is about 50 percent. In the first place there are the spontaneous gangs that are created in the suburbs, those connected to the underworld as in Milan the affiliates of the ‘Ndrina di Giovine-Serranio, in Vibo Valentia the new Band of the Magliana, in Naples the Sibillo clan and the Buonerba clan, in Crotone I Cirò, in Sicily the Baby-Corleonesi.
In Sicily there is another worrying phenomenon: bands composed by girls alone. The third very offensive group is connected to foreign crime. In Milan there are MS-13, Barrio Banlieue, Ko Gang, San Siro and Z4, in addition to the group in via Padova which is entirely composed of North Africans. Among the “Latinos” the Barrio are the most dangerous, the Ko Gangs have to do with the Chinese mafia. In La Spezia “La Banda di Piazza Verdi” is considered the recruitment center of illegal boys without parents. In Sassari and in the area of Castel Volturno in Campania the groups related to the Nigerian mafia operate: there are the emils of the cults of the Black Axe, the Mephite, the Vikings. In Genoa the infernal Albanians have passed away.
The police chief Vittorio Pisani has particular attention to these phenomena not only for the social alarm they generate; But because the young gangs that often arise with rebellious motivations are the incubator of a much more devastating organized underworld.
It happened and unfortunately it happens that this delinquency will be firm around the CPR. The stay centers for repatriations – or in the communities that host illegal immigrants. A little virtuous example is that of Vicofaro, in the Pistoiase, managed by Don Massimo Biancalani, where two weeks ago there were two young young migrants for rape and robbery were followed by stabbing.
Whoever says that a remedy exists – identifying it in the presence of the state – is Don Maurizio Patricello, who collaborated with the executive to return the Green Park to Caivano, the neighborhood became theater of mass rapes, in 2023, for which seven minors were severely condemned. The priest had very hard tones against the writer Roberto Saviano and against the Rai3 report transmission, who questioned the Caivano model: “Here the action promoted by Giorgia Meloni worked, the many as Saviano who speak and speak have never been seen”. And on the creation of alternatives and on social recovery in the neighborhood we try to move forward.
To contain these forms of youth deviance, Pisani has in mind a plan that combines repression, vigilance, but also prevention. Because the phenomenon – as shown by the statistical data of the police – in 2023 was slightly decreased: the criminal reports were 31,173 (less 4.5 percent) with 60 percent against non -EU boys. However, what worries is the number of detention in juvenile prisons: we are at 500 very young people. Unfortunately, in a serious increase are sexual violence: more 8.25 percent in a year. They are more committed by non -EU citizens (177 against 138 by Italians), as the robberies appear in strong increase (3,419). Regarding the major cities, in six of the 14 metropolitan areas (Bari, Bologna, Messina, Palermo, Turin and Reggio Calabria) the crimes are stable; In the others there are significant increases with Bologna, Florence, Genoa, Milan and Turin showing a surge of crimes committed by non -EU citizens.
The Minister of the Interior Matteo planted in this regard was clear, two actions are needed: contrast to deviance and fight against school evasion. At the top of the Agenda there is precisely the Baby Gang emergency with a supervision in the territory – just a month ago a police operation involved 14 provinces with dozens of arrests, especially for drug dealing – and two lines of action that the Dicastery owner has traced: “We need a present state, which does not furnish in front of urban and cultural degradation. We need a zero tolerance that is not only slogans, but concrete, coherent and lasting strategy ». Perhaps it is also necessary to understand that a lot of this youth crime is made by children between 20 and 25 years old who have often been born here, speak Italian, but live this country as an enemy.
And Baby Gang sings: “From Catania to the Milan Cathedral / my brother is Moroccan but Italian / what we want, we take it”.
