As part of a Latin American reparative justice program for minors, a delegation of magistrates from Mexico, Costa Rica and Colombia spent a week of training organized by RETE in Turin and Palermo to learn from good Italian practices in the field of testing, alternative routes to jail and networking between institutions and civil society.
During the penultimate week of November, we accompanied them in numerous interchange and training meetings, in particular at the Minority Justice Center in Turin and Palermo, visiting also the prisons - Ferrante Aporti in Turin and Malaspina in Palermo, the First Reception Centre and the Multifunctional Center for Children of Palermo. We also met the Criminal Mediation Centers and Social Services of both Municipalities, also participating in a reparative mediation activity in the Danisinni district of Palermo.
We have deepened the state of juvenile justice with the Antigone Association, together with several researchers and professors from the Department of Law at the University of Turin, and known the initiatives of Libera in Piedmont and Sicily. We have visited the Cascina Caccia, confiscated at the Ndrangheta and entrusted to Libera and Acmos, where various social recovery activities and training for children are awaiting trial or in trial, as well as information and education activities for legality. Finally, the magistrates were able to know the activity of Addio Pizzo in Palermo.
This intense week has allowed all those involved to reason, to confront and deepen the issues related to the work of violence prevention, respect for the rights of minors, promotion of alternative ways to prison and social recovery for youth in conflict with the law, arguments that we work daily in Central America, where the involvement of children, teenagers and young people in the chain of organized crime is unfortunately constantly growing and causes traumas, violence, murders and illegal immigration of unaccompanied minors.