Titles of Honour.—The former existence of so many separate sovereignties and “fountains of honour” gave rise to a great many hereditary titles of nobility. Besides many hundreds of princes, dukes, marquesses, counts, barons and viscounts, there are a large number of persons of “patrician” rank, persons with a right to the designation nobile or signori, and certain hereditary knights or cavalieri. In the “Golden Book of the Capitol” (Libro d’Oro del Campidoglio) are inscribed 321 patrician families, and of these 28 have the title of prince and 8 that of duke, while the others are marquesses, counts or simply patricians. For the Italian orders of knighthood see Knighthood and Chivalry: Orders of Knighthood. The king’s uncle is duke of Aosta, his son is prince of Piedmont and his cousin is duke of Genoa.
Justice.—The judiciary system of Italy is mainly framed on the French model. Italy has courts of cassation at Rome, Naples, Palermo, Turin, Florence, 20 appeal court districts, 162 tribunal districts and 1535 mandamenti, each with its own magistracy (pretura). In 13 of the principal towns there are also pretori who have exclusively penal jurisdiction. For minor civil cases involving sums up to 100 lire (£4), giudici conciliatori have also jurisdiction, while they may act as arbitrators up to any amount by request. The Roman court of cassation is the highest, and in both penal and civil matters has a right to decide questions of law and disputes between the lower judicial authorities, and is the only one which has jurisdiction in penal cases, while sharing with the others the right to revise civil cases.
The pretori have penal jurisdiction concerning all misdemeanours (contravvenzioni) or offences (delitti) punishable by imprisonment not exceeding three months or by fine not exceeding 1000 lire (£40). The penal tribunals have jurisdiction in cases involving imprisonment up to ten years, or a fine exceeding £40, while the assize courts, with a jury, deal with offences involving imprisonment for life or over ten years, and have exclusive jurisdiction (except that the senate is on occasion a high court of justice) over all political offences. Appeal may be made from the sentences of the pretori to the tribunals, and from the tribunals to the courts of appeal; from the assize courts there is no appeal except on a point of form, which appeal goes to the court of cassation at Rome. This court has the supreme power in all questions of legality of a sentence, jurisdiction or competency.
The penal code was unified and reformed in 1890. A reform of late years is the condanna condizionale, equivalent to the English “being bound over to appear for judgment if called upon,” applied in 94,489 cases in 1907. In civil matters there is appeal from the giudice conciliatore to the pretore (who has jurisdiction up to a sum of 1500 lire = £60) from the pretore to the civil tribunal, from the civil tribunal to the court of appeal, and from the court of appeal to the court of cassation.
The judges of all kinds are very poorly paid. Even the first president of the Rome court of cassation only receives £600 a year.
The statistics of civil proceedings vary considerably from province to province. Lombardy, with 25 lawsuits per 1000 inhabitants, holds the lowest place; Emilia comes next with 31 per 1000; Tuscany has 39; Venetia, 42; Calabria, 144; Rome, 146; Apulia, 153; and Sardinia, 360 per 1000. The high average in Sardinia is chiefly due to cases within the competence of the conciliation offices. The number of penal proceedings, especially those within the competence of praetors, has also increased, chiefly on account of the frequency of minor contraventions of the law referred to in the section Crime. The ratio of criminal proceedings to population is, as a rule, much higher in the south than in the north.
A royal decree, dated February 1891, established three classes of prisons: judiciary prisons, for persons awaiting examination or persons sentenced to arrest, detention or seclusion for less than six months; penitentiaries of various kinds (ergastoli, case di reclusione, detenzione or custodia), for criminals condemned to long terms of imprisonment; and reformatories, for criminals under age and vagabonds. Capital punishment was abolished in 1877, penal servitude for life being substituted. This generally involves solitary confinement of the most rigorous nature, and, as little is done to occupy the mind, the criminal not infrequently becomes insane. Certain types of dangerous individuals are relegated after serving a sentence in the ordinary convict prisons, and by administrative, not by judicial process, to special penal colonies known as domicilii coatti or “forced residences.” These establishments are, however, unsatisfactory, being mostly situated on small islands, where it is often difficult to find work for the coatti, who are free by day, being only confined at night. They receive a small and hardly sufficient, allowance for food of 50 centesimi a day, which they are at liberty to supplement by work if they can find it or care to do it.
Notwithstanding the construction of new prisons and the transformation of old ones, the number of cells for solitary confinement is still insufficient for a complete application of the penal system established by the code of 1890, and the moral effect of the association of the prisoners is not good, though the system of solitary confinement as practised in Italy is little better. The total number of prisoners, including minors and inhabitants of enforced residences, which from 76,066 (2.84 per 1000 inhabitants) on the 31st of December 1871 rose to a maximum of 80,792 on the 31st of December 1879 (2.87 per 1000), decreased to a minimum of 60,621 in 1896 (1.94 per 1000), and on the 31st of December 1898 rose again to 75,470 (2.38 per 1000), of whom 7038, less than one-tenth, were women. The lowness of the figures regarding women is to be noticed throughout. On the 31st of December 1903 it had decreased to 65,819, of which 6044 were women. Of these, 31,219 were in lockups, 25,145 in penal establishments, 1837 minors in government, and 4547 in private reformatories, and 3071 (males) were inmates of forced residences.
Crime.—Statistics of offences, including contravvenzioni or breaches of by-laws and regulations, exhibit a considerable increase per 100,000 inhabitants since 1887, and only a slight diminution on the figures of 1897. The figure was 1783.45 per 100,000 in 1887, 2164.46 in 1892, 2546.49 in 1897, 2497.90 in 1902. The increase is partly covered by contravvenzioni, but almost every class of penal offence shows a rise except homicide, and even in that the diminution is slow, 5418 in 1880, 3966 in 1887, 4408 in 1892, 4005 in 1897, 3202 in 1902; and Italy remains, owing to the frequent use of the knife, the European country in which it is most frequent. Libels, insults, &c., resistance to public authority, offences against good customs, thefts and frauds, have increased; assaults are nearly stationary. There is also an increase in juvenile delinquency. From 1890 to 1900 the actual number rose by one-third (from 30,108 to 43,684), the proportion to the rest of those sentenced from one-fifth to one-fourth; while in 1905 the actual number rose to 67,944, being a considerable proportionate rise also. In Naples, the Camorra and in Sicily, the Mafia are secret societies whose power of resistance to authority is still not inconsiderable.
Procedure, both civil and criminal, is somewhat slow, and the preliminary proceedings before the juge d’instruction occupy much time; and recent murder trials, by the large number of witnesses called (including experts) and the lengthy speeches of counsel, have been dragged out to an unconscionable length. In this, as in the intervention of the presiding judge, the French system has been adopted; and it is said (e.g. by Nathan, Vent’ anni di vita italiana, p. 241) that the efforts of the juge d’instruction are, as a rule, in fact, though not in law, largely directed to prove that the accused is guilty. In 1902 of 884,612 persons accused of penal offences, 13.12% were acquitted during the period of the instruction, 30.31 by the courts, 46.32 condemned and the rest acquitted in some other way. This shows that charges, often involving preliminary imprisonment, are brought against an excessive proportion of persons who either are not or cannot be proved to be guilty. The courts of appeal and cassation, too, often have more than they can do; in the year 1907 the court of cassation at Rome decided 948 appeals on points of law in civil cases, while no fewer than 460 remained to be decided.
As in most civilized countries, the number of suicides in Italy has increased from year to year.
The Italian suicide rate of 63.6 per 1,000,000 is, however, lower than those of Denmark, Switzerland, Germany and France, while it approximates to that of England. The Italian rate is highest in the more enlightened and industrial north, and lowest in the south. Emilia gives a maximum rate of 10.48 per 100,000, while that of Liguria and Lazio is little lower. The minimum of 1.27 is found in the Basilicata, though Calabria gives only 2.13. About 20% of the total are women, and there is an increase of nearly 3% since 1882 in the proportion of suicides under twenty years of age.
Army.—The Italian army grew out of the old Piedmontese army with which in the main the unification of Italy was brought about. This unification meant for the army the absorption of contingents from all parts of Italy and presenting serious differences in physical and moral aptitudes, political opinions and education. Moreover the strategic geography of the country required the greater part of the army to be stationed permanently within reach of the north-eastern and north-western frontiers. These conditions made a territorial system of recruiting or organization, as understood in Germany, practically impossible. To secure fairly uniform efficiency in the various corps, and also as a means of unifying Italy, Piedmontese, Umbrians and Neapolitans are mixed in the same corps and sleep in the same barrack room. But on leaving the colours the men disperse to their homes, and thus a regiment has, on mobilization, to draw largely on the nearest reservists, irrespective of the corps to which they belong. The remedy for this condition of affairs is sought in a most elaborate and artificial system of transferring officers and men from one unit to another at stated intervals in peace-time, but this is no more than a palliative, and there are other difficulties of almost equal importance to be surmounted. Thus in Italy the universal service system, though probably the best organization both for the army and the nation, works with a maximum of friction. “Army Reform,” therefore, has been very much in the forefront of late years owing to the estrangement of Austria (which power can mobilize much more rapidly), but financial difficulties have hitherto stood in the way
