NCJ Number
202678
Journal
Punishment & Society Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Dated: October 2003 Pages: 371-397
Date Published
October 2003
Length
27 pages
Annotation
The article explores the migratory movement in Europe and its relationship to crime, specifically crime in the modern world and in the European country of Italy.
Abstract
Migratory movements and the accompanying criminalization and penalization of migrants dates back to the Middle Ages and has recurring features in the modern world. Recently, there has been a re-emergence of interest in migration and crime, extending to all of Europe. There has been an extension into countries that used to be e-migrating countries and have now become im-migrating countries, such as Spain, Portugal, and Italy. This article examines the overrepresentation of foreigners in the European penal systems today, specifically the criminalization of foreigners in the European country of Italy. According to both sociological and legal research on criminalization of migrants in Italy, the main probability nexus that should be established is not between criminalization and migrants but between criminalization and undocumented migrants. The article presents that there must be a relationship between the social homogeneity of those countries which express a hostile attitude towards immigrants, their relying on informal means of social control, the wanting clarity of their rules and the higher likelihood for foreigners of becoming the victims of a formal system of social control which is increasingly reserved only to them. Italian offenders then get more and more non-detentive custody and punishment and foreigners are locked in prison more often. The discrimination is embedded in the structure of social relationships that pushes certain immigrants towards what is officially detected and represented as crime. In conclusion, the same way Italians had to struggle with prejudice and stereotypes that would link them to images of organized crime, so the new immigrants to Italy will have to do the same for the kind of crime and deviance they are associated with. References