Social dangerousness and security measures

Abstract

This article deals with the history of social danger and security measures in the Italian legal system. By analyzing the evolution of these concepts throughout time, the author shows how through segregation they have represented a mean of social control and a reference model of the so-called criminal law. Safety measures have their origins in the crisis of the Classical law school approach and in the theoretical development of the Positivist school. They were then consecrated with the introduction of the double-binary system in the Rocco code in 1930. Although the legislators and law’s judges, also in regards to safety measures, repeatedly attempted to affirm equality, rationality and offensive principles along with the educational rehabilitation characterizing the penalty, these laws still nowadays reaffirm their nature of securitarian treatment for social deviance.