It’s rare for Italian lawmakers from across the political spectrum to agree on anything. But on Tuesday, the lower house of Parliament unanimously ratified a law introducing the crime of femicide into Italy’s criminal code, punishable by life in prison.
(title from entry in NYT’s The Morning newsletter)
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As domestic violence survivors this is a great start and more countries should follow however i do believe their should be harsher laws regarding domestic assault. Often times they let go , scott free of any charges because of he said /she said even with evidence . Since they do not face any real consequences it can eventually escalate to femicide . They need to be stopped before it gets to that point .
Penalties for homicide in Italy, are generally still harsh enough that increasing them won’t realistically make a difference.
But this kind of murder is most often an escalation, and so the chance for prevention exists. But that sounds hard, increasing the penalty for the murder to life +5 yeas is easy.
Meanwhile in France they’ll label it a crime of passion and let you go scot-free.
Anyone questioning why this is necessary should probably take a minute or two to read up about femicide and how we tend to treat it as a society.
Do you have sources for that ?
Because in not a lawyer or have any expertise in law but your comment got me curious and what I’m reading seems to contradict your statement.
Like here :https://www.savoir-juridique.com/crime-passionnel-mythe-realite-juridique-droit-penal/
It seems that there is very rare cases when passion was used to lower the sentencing but it’s very anectoctical and the “crime passionel” is not recognized by French law
I had Bertrand Cantat in mind when I wrote the comment. The fucker got away (except a very minor prison sentence once) with murdering two of his partners, all in full view of a public spectacle. There’s a Netflix series about him from this year that’s well worth a watch. It’s not that the crime of passion is explicitly used as a legal argument, but there is a romanticized idea that men will sometimes kill their partners out of “loving them too much” and that this is only tragic and not something that we should blame them too harshly for. So it’s not recognized in the law, but French judges have more or less routinely shown themselves to be sympathetic to the argument.
The European Court of Human Rights has recently had a series of rulings in which it calls out France for being particularly shit with regards to women’s rights.
Thanks, I’ll have a look at these.
Edit: so, in the case of Marie Trintignant’s murder by Bertrand Cantat, the whole trial happened in Lithuania under Lithuanian laws. The crime of passion is a legitimate defense in Lithuania but this has nothing to do with French laws.
For the fact that sexual attacks against women are often downplayed by justice in France, this is a real fact. The recent Pelicot trial really brought this to public light.
Yes, this is true - I forgot that the trial happened in Lithuania where crime of passion actually has a formalized role. But the french media nevertheless accepted the narrative and the French public largely followed suit.
As for the second murder/death which happened in France, there has been what is hard to describe as anything else than at best an active neglectance on the side of both the French police and justice system, both leading up to and following the death. I guess this is more symptomatic of the French tendency to simply not take women or their deaths seriously—ascribing the crime of passion to France was probably unfair of me.
Crime of passion? That’s still a thing?
A bunch of dudes were melting down when this was posted on another thread.
It’s threatening our god-given right to murder our women, after all. The woke agenda has gone too far.
I been sitting over here on Parchment Farm Ain’t ever done nobody no wrong
Oh Lord, I believe I’ll be here for the rest of my life All I did was shoot my wife
A bunch of dudes
You knew they were dudes?
melting down
You don’t object to gender discrimination in the law?
How do we even know you’re not working in a troll farm?
To the uncritical, any critic is a troll. To question is to troll.
A bunch of mysoginists were melting down. It’s a huge problem in Italy and a lot of women are being killed. The maximum sentence is 25 years so what this does is tack on another charge. Motive always is examined in murder trials. If there was a billion dollar propaganda industry telling women to abuse and subjugate men and that was resulting in an epidemic of murder then that would have to be addressed by the law.
A bunch of mysoginists were melting down.
As you scientifically deduced from what? Objecting to gender discrimination?
Maybe you need to get over your bias. Justice is not a 0-sum game: generalizing the increase in penalties to any gender hatred accomplishes the same without gender discrimination. They could even give it a snappy name like gendercide.
Sorry for all the down voters, but this guy is right. Modern western societies have struggled to make laws equal for everyone. This is a step down for on good reason.
If half of the murder victims in any unchangeable demographic are killed because they are part of that demographic, why not extend hate crime coverage to them? It doesn’t preclude you from charging other women with femicide, nor does it preclude you from making men or non binary people a hate crime category if they become targeted for their gender, but extending it to gender in general if that’s not reflective of crime statistics increases the costs of investigation by a lot.
but extending it to gender in general if that’s not reflective of crime statistics increases the costs of investigation by a lot
So, your defense of gender discrimination is unsubstantiated economic expediency? Do you even pretend to care about morality or equality before the law?
Unresearched claims of increasing “costs of investigation by a lot” don’t justify immorality & violating a universal human right for equal protection of the law. It’s not hard to quit rationalizing the indefensible & admit femicide should have been addressed through a nondiscriminatory law on gendercide.
How many of the men who are murdered in Italy are killed for being men? If it’s a large proportion (for women in Italy, it’s over half), then sure, apply it to them.
Maybe bring that up with the Italian government. I’m sure they’d respond well to a letter with the same tone as your comment. I’m not continuing this conversation with you though.
Ifs and buts.
Russians would love this stuff. Killing a Russian on occupied territory as a hate crime against minority for Ukrainians with stiffer penalties or even death sentence.
…as an example.
The minute you start creating special groups it will be abused. Lessons from history is the reason why “all equal under law” was something to strived for.
Why not make the rich a hated minority, so we can get back to good old aristocracy.
Laws are different during wartime against an invading army. If it’s a random Russian who’s been living in Ukraine lawfully for the last thirty years, then yeah, it is an ethnically motivated crime and should be punished differently.
The reason that hate crimes are handled differently is because a person who commits one is more likely as a whole to commit more hate crimes than one who kills an individual for individual reasons (though sometimes it’s just a crime of opportunity, which happens to involve a targeted group, in which case it should be determined in court not to be a hate crime).
Because it doesn’t make a difference.
So a woman murdered by a man is somehow more murdered than one murdered by another woman, a sister, a lover?
This is an arbitrary distinction. Someone was murdered, why they were murdered doesn’t change the fact they were murdered, and frankly if you’re going to say it will change sentencing, it shouldn’t.
Murder is murder, the end.
Motivation is what can split murder and manslaughter in some countries.
Yes it should change sentencing, because the primary goal of the justice system should be rehabilitation, not punishment, and there are absolutely people who have commited murder and are capable of being fully rehabilitated, and those that can’t, and they should not be sentenced the same.
Or do you seriously think, for example, people who end up murdering their abusers out of revenge or desperation should actually receive the same punishment as someone who murders a random person purely because they hate something about their identity, or an abuser who murder their victim ?
It’s a huge problem in Italy and a lot of women are being killed. The maximum sentence is 25 years so what this does is tack on another charge. Motive always is examined in murder trials. If there was a billion dollar propaganda industry telling women to abuse and subjugate men and that was resulting in an epidemic of murder then that would have to be addressed by the law.
When a cop murders a black man it’s self defence, when a man murders a woman it’s a brief display of bad judgment in a moment of passion. Society has never seen murder as murder “the end”.
As much as I don’t mind this, part of me thinks this won’t do anything… Men who kill their female partners don’t care about any possible consequences. If they thought about those they wouldn’t abuse their partner in the first place. There’s a reason the TF2 Sniper in his Meet the Team video says blokes who bludgeon their wife to death with a golf trophy have too many feelings. They literally cannot fathom consequences, considering that if their abuse manages to get to that point, it’s because NO ONE cared to fucking intervene.
I’d say it’s about recognizing a fact of life that we have traditionally brushed under the carpet. By introducing femicide as a specific category it’ll be easier to talk about (or rather, harder not to talk about) just how fucking common it is for men to murder women.
It’s a huge problem in most if not all countries, and it doesn’t receive nearly as much attention as it deserves. The attention it does get is primarily through folk songs or true crime podcasts, not actual attention as a systematic issue that needs to be addressed as a societal problem.
So it won’t deter anyone from murdering women, but when it does happen it might make it easier for us to start actually doing something about it as a society.
Ah, I see it now. As someone who lives in Brazil with one of the highest rates of women being killed by their partners (or, usually, former partners), we had this classification for a long while, but I never understood as to why. Now I do!
(That’s the reason the lawmakers gave too.)
It’s a way to take the severity of the motivation into account when sentencing.
Someone who committed murder could have done so under all sorts of mitigating circumstances, classifying the crime as a hate crime speaks to the horrificly unjustifiable motivation, and is indicative of someone who should be less likely, or ineligible for parole.
Sure, we could just keep calling it murder, and take those things into account anyway, but I think it’s ultimately good to have these distinctions, and there’s plenty of other similar cases where we do distinguish between crimes based on intent, rather than outcome, particularly for crimes against people (you may, for example, apply your exact logic to the distinction between 1st and 2nd degree murder, or even murder and manslaughter. It’s not like a murder 1 victim is any better off for their killers crime being called murder instead of manslaughter)
This is probably more for the victims than the killers.
And what does this do for them? They’re still murdered, just like a woman murdered by another woman.
Maybe I should have specified that it’s for the survivors of the victims. I personally can’t relate, but I suspect some people would feel a lot better if the crime is specified as a distinct type of murder.
Beccaria is spinning in his grave.
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Did they do the same for murders due to any gender hatred?
I don’t think many countries are at the point of protecting trans rights specifically. At least, mine does classify it as a hate crime but it’s lumped together with all the other hate crimes.
Where are you getting numbers that indicate women are killing their male spouses at rates even remotely comparable to men killing their female spouses?
No, please, I’ll wait — I’ll be adding to your ‘Debatelord Incel’ tag if you can’t.
Edit: he downvotes me and says nothing, I’m adding ‘Tiny Penis’ to your tag.
Do the rates matter? Does covering everyone cost extra?
Law shouldn’t discriminate for sex or gender or race or a bunch of other things (yes there can be rare exceptions where the biological sex does matter, e.g. abortion, but can we read a whole paragraph without whaboutism?)
People go through a ton of effort to explain how it’s perfectly possible (and common) to write laws with sexist results even using neutral language.
And yet when we need to do the reverse, write laws that are meant to combat discrimination and and inequality without having to spell out and pick each specific group it’s meant to protect the same people go “nope, sorry, can’t be done”.
Edit: Think of the so-called “pink quotas” argument. Does it make a difference to write that you need at least 30% women, or to write that you need at least 30% of each sex? Practical results is exactly. the same, but one of the two is written neutrally, and I think there is value in that. Don’t you?
Dude — do you understand the etymology of homicide? It is a combination of homo (man) and caedere (to kill).
Fucks sake, I’m not arguing this with troglodytes — you are wrong.
And the etymology of “nice” is that it used to mean “foolish, ignorant, frivolous, senseless”. Does that mean that saying, “Have a nice day” is to tell people to be foolish?
Of course not. Meanings evolve, and if everyone understands “homicide” as meaning “killing a human” (gender-neutrally), then that’s the wisest way to interpret it today, regardless of what it meant when it was first coined in Latin.
It’s a bit worse than that though.
The law in Italy literally defines homicide as the killing of a man. God knows how long it’s been on the books with that wording.
Of course that hasn’t stopped anyone from being prosecuted for that crime even with that wording, and that use is clearly understood to be synonymous with human, the same way that noone thinks that the word mankind excludes women. No lawyer, judge of citizen has any doubt with regards to that.
Nevertheless, in this day and age that wording does feels dated, even to me.
The incels are out in droves! You lot are about as bad as the .mlers.
Downvotes and doesn’t answer to the point.
Class.
I quite literally destroyed your argument.
Why weren’t you incels crying about homicide not being gender neutral? I’ll wait.
women are killing their male
Did you know there are other genders in the world? Your bias is showing.
he
Yet more unfounded assumptions.
Since when did numbers matter in defining wrongful conduct as crime?
How about you answer the original question & reflect on the concept of gender discrimination?
And no, brah, I didn’t downvote you. Fun fact: I can’t. Let’s add jumps to conclusions to your list.
