<i>La Vittima nel Sistema Penale</i>

Abstract

The present work is based on the assumption that the victim of the offence, notwithstanding a longstanding obsolescence, plays a crucial role in criminal sciences. On this base, the investigation focuses on the role and the protection of the victim under national and supranational criminal laws, which still displays remarkable discrepancies. As a matter of fact, while the latter grant the victim with a central role, the former are still far from such perspective. With regard to internal acts, different approaches are put in place towards the objectives of the prevention of victimization and the victim’s protection. As for the first objective, which is still pursued by means of punitive measures, i. e. criminal law., some contradictions shall by underlined: from one side, some recent criminal policy options, concerning behaviour causing high social alarm, displays certain attention to victimology, even though they are also influenced by a social-defence approach; from the other side, other legislative responses are not keen at all on the victimological side, even though they concern behaviour rather frequent and harmful, but not perceived as such in the community, also because of a misinformation campaign by the mass media. As for the second objective, the situation does not seem much better. It is true that the role and the protection of the offended person in the criminal proceeding has been strengthened – even though what has been done is not sufficient yet to meet the obligations under supranational acts – and it is also true that certain restorative justice mechanisms have been introduced with the aim to develop such role. However, the legal framework is not at all satisfactory with regard to the tools for the assistance to the victim and for the reparation with public resources, the latter being extremely limited to the victim of certain types of offences only, in spite of a EU infringement procedure.