A Criminological Investigation into the Operation and Effects of Structural Violence on Migrant Offenders within Italy's Criminal Justice System

Despite representing a mere 13% of the Italian population, immigrants make up 32.5% of the prison population (Antigone, 2020). This research project will examine the reasons behind this overrepresentation, a subject that has received scant academic attention hitherto. An overwhelming focus on administrative immigration detention (see, for instance, Aliverti, 2012; Franco and Bosworth, 2013; Canning, 2017) has, in fact, left the criminal prosecution of migrants largely overlooked. This is a prominent gap in the academic literature that this research aims to address. In particular, this research aims to investigate the relationship between migration, individuality and criminal justice; the contribution of the Italian criminal justice system in the overrepresentation of immigrants in criminal incarceration, to assess whether its functioning acts as a structural expression of oppression which transforms migration into an issue of law and order needing pronounced punitiveness; the contribution of the Italian criminal justice system in the production of oppression and marginality in relation to migration, and how these crystallise into social harm; finally, what works, what does not work and what is promising in terms of mitigating the structured risk of the Italian criminal justice system for injustice in relation to migration.
In order to address its aims, this research employs a multiple case study research design of three Italian cities. Rome, Milan, and Florence were purposively selected because they possessed the highest numbers of incarcerated migrants (after sentencing for a criminal rather than administrative offence), as recorded on 31 July 2020 (Antigone, 2020). Significant background data will be obtained and analysed through drawing on case information (i.e., types of crime or length of sentence, ethnicity, country of origin, age, and anything additional), legal and policy documentation. Data collection methods will also involve individual in-depth interviews, which will be utilised for favouring the sharing of personal individual experiences, as well as focus group, for discussing compelling macro level issues around the overrepresentation of immigrants in criminal incarceration. Data will be examined through discourse analysis, which will help understand how participants construct meaning through the language they use in relation to their lives, social structure, and power dynamics. Participants will be migrants who have had contact with Italy's criminal justice system, recruited through snowball sampling; and criminal justice practitioners, community representatives and humanitarian stakeholders, who will be purposively located to select individuals who are knowledgeable about the issues this research aims to address.