TENDENCY TO DELINQUENCY
The current Italian Penal Code, departing from the conception of the classical school, which regarded the crime as an abstract entity, and embracing the more modern teaching that links the crime to the individual, has taken a decisive step toward the subjectivization of crime, which must be studied and considered in direct and concrete relation to the person of its perpetrator.
Within this process of subjectivizing crime, the figure of the delinquent by tendency emerges: such a person is declared, under Article 108 of the Penal Code, as one who, “although not a recidivist or habitual or professional offender, commits a non-negligent crime against life or individual incompatibility... which, in itself and together with the circumstances indicated in the second paragraph of Article 133, reveals an inclination toward crime arising from the particularly wicked nature of the guilty party. This provision does not apply if the inclination toward crime originates from the mental infirmity foreseen by Articles 88 and 89.”
In the delinquent by tendency, the lack of moral sense does not derive from nor is it associated with any psychological disturbance in the intellectual or volitional sphere: “These are individuals,” reads the report of the Minister of Justice, “who, despite having clear intellect and normal will, lack moral and social sense. Often highly intelligent and cunning, they nonetheless lack even the minimum ethical-social capacity to live in human society; wicked and dangerous, they possess a disposition, an inclination, a tendency toward crime ready to erupt...” The delinquent by tendency is thus characterized by moral deficiency, by the wickedness of their nature, and by particular dangerousness; however, this tendency toward crime must not originate from pathological causes of any kind that affect the capacity to understand or to will.
The identification of the figure of the delinquent by tendency has given rise to heated disputes. It has been argued that one who is irredeemably driven to crime by their nature is irresponsible. The tendency toward crime would be nothing more than an element or a result of mental infirmity. This is not accurate: the lack of moral sense does not imply a lack of the capacity to understand or to will; nor does the awareness of the morality or immorality of the action committed bear any relation, in the agent, to their capacity to understand or to will.
The Code, by establishing a practical norm to define these cases existing in everyday reality, has clearly specified that the declaration of a tendency to delinquency may be pronounced by the judge only when the immorality and wickedness of the guilty party do not originate from a state of infirmity. It is the judge who, with the sentence of conviction, must declare the guilty party a delinquent by tendency. To justify this declaration, the judge must consider the perpetration of the crime committed (which must be a non-negligent crime against life or individual incompatibility) and the personality of the offender, their nature, and their particular inclination toward crime, taking into account, in addition to the nature and circumstances of the committed crime, the motives of the criminal action, the character of the offender, their prior criminal record, their life before and after the crime, and the environmental conditions of the offender’s life. When, from an examination of all these elements, the judge is convinced of the dangerousness of the offender and their particular inclination toward crime, they must, with the sentence of conviction, issue the declaration of a tendency to delinquency.
This declaration produces highly significant effects, such as the imposition of a security measure involving assignment to an agricultural colony or a workhouse for a period not less than four years, and perpetual disqualification from public office, in addition to lesser penal effects, such as the serving of the sentence in special institutions, the inapplicability of amnesty and pardon, and the prohibition of conditional suspension of the sentence.
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TENDENCY TO DELINQUENCY - DAVID TENIERS
This is reflected in his early works, such as the group *Venus and Love*, whose original plaster model is in Rome at the Tenerani Gipsoteca, and in *Abandoned Psyche* (Palazzo Lenzoni, Florence). In 1823, T. traveled to Florence, where he reconnected with Bartolini. However, this new encounter did not free him from the conformisms of the Roman academy, though, progressing cautiously along that path, he showed, after the Florentine journey, a gradual desire to replace the elements derived from the study and imitation of antiquity with those drawn from the imitation and study of 15th-century sculpture, which he had before him in Rome, where he soon returned. Thus, almost imperceptibly, not his plastic style but his manner of depicting images evolved, no longer disguised in heroic attire with togas, cloaks, and armor, but represented with expressions akin to the polished sculpture of the 15th century by Bregno and his pupils. This allowed him in 1840 to subscribe to the famous manifesto of the “Purism” movement (v.) and to participate with his works in the debate on how to clothe modern figures in sculpture. In this debate, he positioned himself as an anti-classicist by dressing Ferdinando II (1840), who was in Messina, the Simón Bolívar intended for Bogotá (1842), and the Pellegrino Rossi of Carrara and the Gallery of Modern Art in Rome (1854) in the clothing of their time. From this middle period of T.’s activity, the finest work is the large relief of the *Deposition* found in the Torlonia chapel in S. Giovanni in Laterano. Other works by him include: the sculptures of the Lante chapel in S. Maria sopra Minerva, the monument to Pius VIII in St. Peter’s, the *St. Benedict* in the chapel dedicated to that saint in the basilica of S. Paolo in Rome, the Constabili tomb in the cemetery of Ferrara, the monument containing the heart of Simón Bolívar in Bogotá (1852), the Pelzer tomb in S. Maria del Popolo in Rome (1852), and some portraits, among which are remembered, in addition to those appearing in various funerary monuments, that of Princess Wolkonski in the Gallery of Modern Art, also in Rome.
These are, in the final analysis, the best works of the sculptor and earn T. a place—not necessarily at the very forefront—but a distinct one in the crowded ranks of those practicing the plastic arts in Rome in the first half of the 19th century.