The increase in juvenile delinquency and educational emergency during the postwar period in Italy (1945-1955)

Abstract

In this contribution we combine the “education in emergencies” concept with a historiographical perspective, investigating the increase in juvenile delinquency in Italy following the end of the Second World War that resulted from the loosening of family ties and the decline in the parental monitoring of children, as well as from malnutrition, overcrowded living conditions in poor quality housing and the general collapse of public morality. This worrying situation immediately attracted the attention of the public authorities, who tried to remedy it either through repressive interventions – with the establishment of Juvenile Police Offices and the activity of the Juvenile Courts – or through educational and caregiving interventions aimed at the recovery of young offenders and their reintegration into school, such as those promoted by the Board of Education, the National Centre or Social Prevention and Defence, the National League for the Moral Protection of Children and the numerous spontaneous committees of various political leanings that sprang up all over Italy.