Crimes and unaccompanied foreign minors: we see the guilt, but not the traumas
"The unaccompanied foreign minors arriving in Italy today have different characteristics compared to those we saw even just ten years ago." Virginia Suigo , a psychotherapist, coordinates the team of psychologists at Minotauro who collaborate with the Juvenile Justice Services of Lombardy. She has written some chapters of the new book edited by Alfio Maggiolini , Non solo baby gang (Franco Angeli), which takes a realistic picture of crimes committed by minors in groups, beyond the (inappropriate) social alarm surrounding the topic.
Together with his working group, Suigo meets minors who commit crimes at the Office of Social Services for Minors – Ussm in Milan, an organizational unit of the Ministry of Justice that deals with assisting minors involved in criminal proceedings. The presence of unaccompanied foreign minors is growing: in 2023, the Ussm counted 113 unaccompanied minors out of 896 minors taken into care, +88.3% compared to 2022. At the First Reception Center – Cpa in Milan, the structure that welcomes minors under arrest, detention or escort, until the arrest or detention is validated, or the expulsion is validated, in the two-year period 2018/19 the unaccompanied minors were 5.1% of the minors while they became 20.6% in the two-year period 2022/23. The phenomenon exists and deserves to be addressed, keeping in mind the specificities of these children.
" They bring with them very dramatic stories, traumas with a capital T ," explains Suigo. With colleagues, it comes into play when the kids have learned to speak Italian a little, "because there aren't many resources for cultural mediators. This is a big shortcoming of our service, we can't see the unaccompanied minors who are in CPA or USSM in the early stages," continues Suigo.
In what sense are unaccompanied minors today different from even just ten years ago? What characteristics do they have?
The traditional profile of the unaccompanied foreign minor that we were used to was that of the boy on whom there was an investment, an important family mandate . The family bet on him. In fact, we wondered how much the definition of unaccompanied foreign minors was appropriate, because in reality they were almost never alone, on the contrary, they were very often overburdened by very concrete family mandates: sending money, being of help to the family. We saw very overloaded kids compared to the fact that the family expected an easy and rapid integration into the Italian working reality, something that instead often clashed with the paths rightly protecting with respect to their minority.
And now what are the conditions of these kids?
Now we see very often compromised situations. Young people arrive in Italy who already had significant problems in their country of origin, exacerbated by migratory journeys that have brought about traumas that have been added to those that were there before . These are often young people who already had behavioral difficulties, who ran away from home or who already had a problem of aversion to rules in their country of origin. There is no longer any family investment in them because, on the contrary, the family was unable to manage them and hopes that they will find their way elsewhere.
We very often see compromised situations, young people who already had significant problems in their country of origin arrive in Italy, exacerbated by migratory journeys that have brought about traumas that have been added to those that were there before.
Virginia Suigo
What are the sufferings of these boys?
They are unimaginable, atrocious. They are terrified kids, who were afraid of not surviving , who crossed the camps in Libya, who during the migratory journey had experiences beyond good and evil. They lived situations with the fear of dying, at the root of everything . Many kids today are really very alone, very compromised and less equipped with resources, without a family that invests, that gives them a mandate or a purpose . In addition, they have behavioral or psychiatric problems, they have a traumatic history that then becomes polytraumatic during the journey. They stay inside the reception circuits for months. When we meet them, sometimes it happens that they don't even know a word of Italian, but maybe they have been in Italy for a year and a half: a period in which they have lived in hardship. Often, polydrug use is added. These are situations that, even if they involve two or three people, are enough to put a system into crisis. So, there is the quantitative but also qualitative issue with respect to the type of situations we encounter. It is clear that in this type of situation we should be able to work with smaller experiments.
Aren't these experiments done?
A little bit, yes, they exist. I am talking about a reception model with very small numbers, groups of four-five people, because these kids need a huge support network and many resources. If they are placed in confusing and confusing situations, there is a high risk that they will start a delinquent career, that they will take even more substances and so on.
How are unaccompanied minors doing in prison?
I was very struck by a piece of data contained in the Antigone dossier on the emergency in juvenile penal institutions One year after the Caivano decree (published on 2 October 2024), which refers to the growth in the use of psychotropic drugs in juvenile penal institutions. For example , at the Juvenile Penal Institute-Ipm Beccaria there was a 219% increase between 2020 and 2022 in the administration of psychotropic drugs (Altroconsumo data). I was struck by the increase in this medical expenditure, it makes it clear that we are moving towards a medical-psychiatric management of explosive situations, which should instead be managed in another way. This data also tells us a lot about the underlying political choices. It must also be said that not all IPMs in Italy are managed in the same way: in other places there is the idea that, in the presence of psychiatric problems linked to drug addiction, to multiple substance abuse (unaccompanied foreign minors often abuse over-the-counter drugs), to psychotropic drugs, in a containment structure such as prison one can have a treatment logic. And, therefore, that the objective could be to get the kids out of there detoxified or well on their way to using drugs: with a reduction in use, with controlled use or with the interruption of the intake. From the data we have on Beccaria instead it seems that a short circuit has been created for which increasingly compromised kids arrive, with the two problems that are typical of the new waves of migration.
What are these two issues?
The typical problems of the new waves of migration are – as I was saying – post-traumatic and poly-consumption of various substances, which are managed with the use of drugs to try to keep the behavior of people in overcrowded prisons with structural complexities under control. It is as if the use of drugs to manage behavior were increasing, but this means that the kids are actually increasingly ungovernable and increasingly difficult to place elsewhere.
Because if a boy in prison is used to taking an anxiolytic, or other substances that keep him calm because otherwise he has the perception of himself as a person out of control, it is very difficult to be able to place him in a socio-educational community without immediately creating management problems: the use of drugs to control the behavior of unaccompanied minors like this is a "dog chasing its own tail".
What are the difficulties you see among the kids who leave the IPMs?
In our work with socio-educational communities we see all the difficulties they have in integrating the kids who come from Beccaria into their facilities, precisely because of this issue of managing behaviors and medications: these communities do not have the figure of the psychiatrist, the nurse, they are professionals who must be activated from time to time in the territory. There is a great difficulty in the transition from prison to the socio-educational community because these are kids who, in the IPMs, are hardly accompanied in learning to regulate their behavior and, therefore, are then difficult to adapt to the lifestyle of the community .
Many of the unaccompanied foreign minors arriving today present post-traumatic problems and problems related to the polyconsumption of various substances. Both are too often managed only with the use of drugs
Virginia Suigo
The book Non solo baby gang. I emozioni violenti di gruppo in adolescenti (Franco Angeli) edited by psychotherapist Alfio Maggiolini, on whom she also collaborated, dedicates an entire chapter to unaccompanied minors. "While emphasizing that the social alarm surrounding crimes committed by minors does not at all correspond to an alarming reality," said Maggiolini in a recent presentation of the book, it must be recognized that "these risk factors exist and make these kids vulnerable to many adverse conditions, including the commission of crimes." At Beccaria at this time, out of 73 minors present, 23 are unaccompanied foreign minors (source Ministry of Justice to VITA), almost a third. But in November 2024, out of 64 kids there were 39 unaccompanied minors, more than half (source: Antigone).
Yes, there is an issue that should not be underestimated, but I do not feel like saying that it is an unmanageable situation in absolute terms. Of course, it could be managed much better upstream: if there were a reception system for unaccompanied minors that was a little more distributed across the territory, we would be talking about different numbers. Instead, especially within metropolitan cities like Milan and Genoa, there is a problem of lack of distribution. The quantitative problem could be much more mitigated than that.
We need to understand their needs and harmonize the responses, avoiding applying our parameters of judgment and thought to those who perhaps do not share them at all.
Virginia Suigo
Then there is the qualitative issue . It is clear that out of a total of 60 million people, the approximately 16 thousand unaccompanied foreign minors present (data as of 31 May 2025, ed. ) are easily absorbable . The Welfare Councillor of the Municipality of Milan, Lamberto Bertoleé, recently underlined at a conference that there is a problem linked to how the reception circuits are managed at a national level and the voluntary nature of the Municipalities' adhesion to the Sai to welcome the unaccompanied foreign minors who arrive. This means that there are great disparities between cities that have given ample availability (although even here the budgets are not enough) and areas that are completely unaffected by the problem because they have simply chosen to move it elsewhere, leaving it to others to deal with.
What specific responses might be needed, regarding unaccompanied foreign minors and their increased percentage presence among minors who commit crimes?
First of all, let's ask ourselves how to create quality reception and integration paths , with limited numbers within small structures that have dedicated and trained staff. This means having more resources available. If there are very complex situations, with people who commit serious crimes, who use multiple substances, who have post-traumatic experiences, we need to activate a set of resources that is the only one capable of intervening when you are in such compromised situations. We need educators as mediators from the countries of origin, who understand their evolutionary need well and not just the pathology, and also whether the perspective is of integration or not (some unaccompanied minors are in transit). Do they have a family mandate behind them? Do they feel the imperative to send money home as soon as possible?
At Beccaria, out of 73 minors present, 23 are unaccompanied foreign minors, almost a third. In November 2024, out of 64 children, 39 were unaccompanied minors, more than half.
We need to understand their needs and fine-tune our responses, avoiding applying our parameters of judgment and thought to those who perhaps do not share them at all . In a country in the midst of a "demographic winter", if we began to look at these young people - just over 16 thousand - as those who will pay our pensions and not as a horde that comes to prey on us, perhaps we would take a little more care of their integration paths , which serve us first and foremost as a country.
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