Crime, Law, and Justice in Fascist Italy: After the Rocco Code

This paper, which represents archival research in progress, considers crime and criminal justice in Fascist Italy during the decade of the 1930s. The period under consideration begins in 1931 with the promulgation of the new, Fascist Penal Code (the Rocco Code, so-called after Alfredo Rocco, the Fascist Minister of Justice who sponsored it). My focus is on how – and how deeply – Fascism penetrated the law and its institutions, and society and daily life, and whether it successfully created a distinct Fascist penal culture. That is, how were concepts of crime and justice reconstituted by Fascism? What did Fascist criminal justice “look like,” and how did it work in practice? Specifically, did the Fascist conception of law (especially criminal law) and Fascist control of procedure relating to criminal law and justice have an impact on actual practice, perception, and behavior?            

Crime, criminal law, and criminal justice under Italian Fascism are, surprisingly, unexplored historical subjects. Scholars have considered squadristi violence and anti-Fascist resistance during the Fascist take-over of power in the early 1920s, and also consider policing and repression throughout the years of the regime, as well as the regime’s use of internal exile and confino for its political opponents. “Ordinary” (non-political) crimes and their process through the justice system have not yet been the subject of research and study, but they have much to tell us about the relationship between law and ideology, about rewriting law to fit theory, and about the gap between Fascist legal theory and representation on the one hand, and every day practice on the other.