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In the article “Il reato di femminicidio nel codice penale italiano: cronaca di una controversia annunciata” [The Offence of Femicide in the Italian Criminal Code: Chronicle of a Foretold Controversy], published in Diritto penale contemporaneo – rivista trimestrale, Emanuele Corn critically examines the process that led to the introduction of the offence of femicide into the Italian Criminal Code, situating the domestic debate within a broader comparative framework and focusing on the theoretical and systematic implications of the new offence.

After reconstructing the extra-penal origins of the concept of femicide and the different ways in which it has been received in American and European legal systems, the author highlights how the Italian legislature addressed the criminalisation of the offence in the absence of a genuine public and comparative debate. This shortcoming emerges particularly clearly in Article 577-bis of the Criminal Code, the result of successive revisions and characterised by a complex and poorly intelligible structure, which makes the identification of the punishable conduct uncertain and raises serious concerns regarding legal certainty and compatibility with the principle of equality.

Corn further emphasises that the new offence risks overlapping with existing forms of aggravated homicide, fostering a form of penal symbolism that is of limited functional value and likely to generate interpretative difficulties in judicial practice. 

Finally, the author points out that the automatic imposition of life imprisonment and the rigid mechanisms for calculating the sentence reflect a criminal policy oriented more towards an emotional response than towards the effective protection of victims, while at the same time the lack of an approach grounded in anti-discrimination law and preventive policies ultimately weakens both the quality of the legislation and the credibility of the penal intervention.

For the full article, click here.