MINORENNI, CORRUZIONE di. - By corruption of m. is meant the action of one who performs acts of lust with persons below an average age of around 16 years; and the crime exists whether these acts are performed on the m., or in his presence, as by inducing him to perform them on himself or on the person of the seducer or on others. Apart from the turpitude of the acts incriminated, certainly grave is the abuse that is made of the inexperience, the ingenuousness of an adolescent person, who either has not or has only just passed the age of childhood, that is, the age in which education and good example are most needed, the age of passions in development and of unsteady character, in order to corrupt and dishonor him. So that almost all legislations protect his unawareness, applying the aphorism, echo of a higher natural law: maxima debetur puero reverentia. Every corruption, every seduction is chargeable (v. SCANDALO), but of particular gravity is the incitement to corruption, which takes advantage of the victim's lower age, often opening the field to another grave social disorder, juvenile delinquency.
Therefore in almost all penal codes penalties are laid down against corrupters of m. The age is not always that of 16 years, as in the Italian Penal Code (cf. arts. 530, 539-544); in the codes of other nations a lower age is in fact contemplated; thus in the Austrian Code 14, in the German Code 16 and 14 according to the gravity of the lustful acts. Another constitutive element and one that represents the materiality of the crime are the acts of lust, that is, acts directed to sexual satisfaction. Certain blameworthy facts, such as a speech, a reading, a book, an obscene performance, condemnable from the moral point of view, escape penal sanction, not constituting the crime under examination, since it is required that the corruption take place by means of acts of lust. The acts of lust punishable in the various penal codes, as in the CIC and in the Italian Penal Code, may then be performed either on the person of the m. or simply in his presence in all those forms which, though taking place without bodily contact, have inherent corrupting power, arousing in the minor the senses of concupiscence. Even a single act suffices to constitute the offense, provided it has the corrupting efficacy that constitutes the reason for the incrimination.
The crime exists even when the consent of the victim intervenes, since the law is directed to protecting youth against acts for which the m. cannot in general be presumed capable of a valid consent. According to at least certain currents of jurisprudence the crime exists even if the m. is corrupted and whatever the degree of corruption to which he has come, since the precocious sensuality of the m. cannot exclude the perversity of one who abuses him, making his redemption more difficult. In any case it is certain that even in a corrupted subject there can be gradations in corruption and the law would be improvident that did not strike the act of one who set about pushing along the path of corruption, up to the most boundless libertinism, an m. who had already been initiated into it. The corrupting acts may follow at different times through the initial work of several persons and with progressive influences, so that he who completes the ruin of innocence and virtue is no less guilty than he who began it.
In one who commits the crime no specific intent is required, which psychologically it is almost impossible to conceive of in the offense. Ordinarily the legislator aggravates the penalty if the crime is committed by deceit or if the guilty party is an ascendant of the minor person or if to him is entrusted the care, education, instruction, supervision or custody of that person.
A special configuration is assumed by violent acts of lust on the person of the minor. Other circumstances may aggravate the crime, as if the crime is committed in a public place or in a place exposed to the public, if on an m. without a legal representative, etc. More than the law, it is often jurisprudence that determines their weight: jurisprudence which, in order to respond to the purposes of the law, should above all keep in mind the protection of the m. in preference to the corrupter. The crime of corruption is generally prosecuted upon private action, that is, following a complaint by a party, save for determined exceptions, or when the crime, for example, is committed by the parent or the guardian of the m. or by a public official; then it is prosecuted ex officio (Italian Penal Code, arts. 530).
The CIC lays down that laypersons who have been legitimately condemned for crimes against the sixth commandment, committed with minors under 16 years, are forthwith held infamous (infamia iuris: penalty latae sententiae, can. 2357 § 1) and gives the Ordinary the faculty to be able to inflict other penalties if he deems it opportune (indeterminate penalties: ferendae sententiae, can. 2357 § 1). And in the case that it were clerics who rendered themselves guilty of such crimes, if minor clerics - on whom the law of celibacy has not been imposed - it lays down that they be punished with fitting penalties, not excluding suspension from the clerical state (can. 2358); if major clerics, they are to be suspended, declared infamous, deprived of any office, benefice, dignity and charge and in the graver cases deposed from their state (can. 2359 § 2).
Bibliography5 works
Vincenzo Fagiolo
JUVENILE DELINQUENCY
The delinquent, unless he borders on the sphere of pathology, carries out a conscious and freely volitional activity. In the minor, however, this consciousness may be lacking for natural causes, arising from the absence of physical-psychic development, or from the still immature intellective-freely volitional faculty. In the first case irresponsibility is presumed, in the second an attenuated responsibility is recognized.
Juvenile criminality is distinguished for the most part from that of adults by a special character. The crime of the minor is, as a rule, the fruit of an impulsive character in which the suddenness and immediacy of ends dominate, whereas the delinquency of adults is marked by a complex intelligent activity, and the purpose intended to be achieved appears more distant. Those crimes that require shrewdness, prudence, and muscular and intellectual development are proper to mature age. In minors, crimes are driven by violent passions and carried out with rapid aggressions sometimes pushed to the point of brutality. Such crimes are committed precisely in the period of the pubertal crisis, that is, when the boy, beginning to assert his physical-psychic personality, feels a morbid need to "se faire valoir." That is, in fact, the period of inconstant will, of illusions, of enthusiasms, of easy oscillations between virtue and vice, between duty and the transgression of it. In it the imbalance between physical and psychic maturity is most serious; and the senses, already well suited to life, dominate a mind not yet fully mature.
1. Students of criminal anthropology and psychology agree in classifying the causes of crime under a twofold order or nature: social causes and individual causes. Crime is thus also a bio-sociological phenomenon, in the sense that its production is contributed to in differing measure, on the one hand, by individual conditions regarding the development and the physical and psychic characteristics of the individual; on the other, by social conditions in which are considered the degree of civilization, economic, cultural and political situations, climate, education, environment, etc.
a) Age and sex. — The period in which the minor delinquent manifests himself most is that of growth. Because of the complex relationships of nature, mostly antagonistic, that are established between this phenomenon and psychic development, the minor does not have full capacity to control his instinctive-affective exuberance, nor to inhibit organic impulses that are ever stronger and more distinct. The biological condition linked to sex can take on particular importance in relation to the development of criminality. From statistics there indeed emerges a marked difference in the number and nature of offenses committed by women as compared with those committed by males. The different physiological and psychic characteristics and the particular tasks proper to woman explain how in her criminality too follows a qualitatively and quantitatively different course. Crimes, in fact, that require muscular strength, audacity and aggressiveness are not observed in female delinquency. Woman, rather than to violence, resorts to fraud, to calumny and, in the case of homicide, to non-violent forms. It is noted, however, that female juvenile delinquency more easily descends into habit. Thus the recidivism of minors also exceeds that of males. This is certainly due to the more prompt treatment of the male, who is reached by correctional measures before he has contracted the habit of crime.
b) Heredity. — The hereditary factor is connected with the origin of the various biological processes that can influence criminal activities. Morelli, Lombroso and in general all the students of the doctrine of hereditary degeneration, which denies belief in the regenerative power of the stock, attribute to the hereditary factor an almost exclusive importance in the genesis of delinquency in general and of juvenile delinquency in particular. Experience and scientific investigation demonstrate, on the other hand, that delinquency itself is not transmitted, but only a predisposition to delinquency (v. EREDITANETÀ). If such a complex predisposing to crime is produced by individual causes, other causes, preparing or triggering, are produced and mature in the environment.
c) The family. — In a depraved or disrupted family environment the minor cannot achieve a healthy and moral formation; but, undergoing the fascination of the passions unleashed by the disorder that surrounds him, he can degenerate into the most genuine delinquency.
d) Destitution. — Thus also destitution, caused by material need as well as by laziness, has its deleterious influence. In such a state minors suffer from the lack of resources in which their own families find themselves, and which in them excite morbid desires and passions.
e) Moral contagion. — Deleterious, finally, are the influences that the contagion and suggestion of delinquents can exercise on minors, especially if already predisposed to criminal impulses. Lying, anger, the instinct of cruelty are easily contagious; and experience teaches how dangerous are associations of juvenile delinquents formed in imitation of those of adult delinquents.
2. Correction of minors
The enormous gravity of juvenile delinquency and the danger that ensues from it for the social order has led to the issuing of norms for the prevention (v.) and correction of delinquent minors.
The Church, sensitive to such correction, was the first to promote remedies. Clement XI, with the motu proprio of 14 Nov. 1703, establishing the first correctional houses for minors, decreed that youths who had not completed 20 years of age, instead of being taken to ordinary prisons, should be confined in correctional houses. The confinement aimed at the re-education of the youth through Christian religious instruction, introduction to work and the teaching of a trade.
The current CIC, although lacking a special legislation, takes delinquent minors into particular consideration.
It distinguishes between infancy and minority. The infans, which extends up to seven years, is by presumption iuris tantum irresponsible. The minor can, on the other hand, be considered at the judge's discretion imputable at least in a limited way. For the less full imputability of minors too the presumption iuris tantum holds, unless it is established otherwise. The reason for this reservation lies precisely in the consideration of the psychological state of the minor, who finds himself in the period of crisis.
The CIC (can. 2230) further advises that educational punishments rather than grave vindictive penalties be applied to the impuberes. Generically, among the penal remedies are indicated admonition, correction, precept, surveillance, which becomes obligatory if the gravity of the case demands it and especially if there is danger of recidivism ("si causa gravitas ferat et praecipue agatur de eo qui in periculo versatur relabendi in idem crimen"; cf. cann. 2306-11). To the puberes, in addition to the aforesaid educational punishments, grave vindictive penalties and the same censures are also inflicted.
The Italian penal Code holds minors under 14 years of age not responsible (art. 97). For those, on the other hand, who have completed 14 years and not 18, imputability is demonstrated by their capacity to understand and to will (art. 98). The penalty, however, in this case is diminished.
The jurisdiction to proceed, for all offenses committed by minors under 18 years of age, is entrusted to the juvenile court, established by Royal Decree-Law No. 1404 of July 20, 1934. For the execution of judicial measures, juvenile reformatories and observation centers have been established, in which a scientific examination of the minor is carried out in order to determine his degree of personality and, consequently, to indicate the most suitable means of ensuring his rehabilitation into public life (arts. 1-8). The juvenile court has the power to order that the delinquent minor be interned in a reformatory for corrigibles, whenever it has emerged from the evidence taken that the minor has contracted unlawful habits and gives manifest proof of waywardness and moral corruption (art. 25). Of the greatest interest is art. 2, which provides that magistrates must have special competence and profound knowledge of the psychological nature of the minor. Finally, a particularly suitable procedure is implemented, suspending all those requirements of procedure relating to time limits, forms, and the solemnities of the hearing, which are less suited to the mind and psychology of the minor. With this, we are still far from an effective method of prevention (v.).
Bibliography2 works
161; G. C. Ferrari, L'O.N.M.I. e i fanciulli cosiddetti criminali, in Riv. di psicologia, 28 (1932), p. 239 ff.; D. Rende, Il tribunale dei m., Rome 1935; N. Crobru, Piccoli naufraghi, ibid. 1939; F. Roberti, De delictis et poenis, I, ibid. 1944, part 1, pp. 110-14; part 2, p. 248; B. Di Tullio, Trattato di antropol. criminale, ibid. 1945, pp. 75, 113; Ministero di grazia e giustizia, Ciclo di studi comparati sulla delinq. minorit., ibid. 1950.
Francesco Ercolani