Enrico Ferri

Society calls for immunological practices, bigger every time in view of the presence of wide “dangerous groups”. Immunization –protection and denial of life– expresses itself through various statistical calculations of risk and the possibility of social damages, selecting and neutralizing certain populations, whose “ways of being are more or less dangerous” representing therefore a social threat. In this way, criminological positivism rises once again within the immunization paradigm, strengthening its control strategies in the name of “social defense”. However, immunization mechanisms, nowadays applied upon all areas of life, threaten to destroy the social body, which is currently confined in isolation, fear and cruelty. Meanwhile, individuals who are “guilty of vulnerability” are grouped in the category of “dangerous populations”, subject to a
number of security measures. This text, which has as its theoretical framework Roberto Esposito’s thoughts on the immunization paradigm and the ideas of the criminal positivism represented by Enrico Ferri regarding the criminalization of certain vulnerable populations, concludes by recognizing that we have to think about other options for protecting life apart from that of denying it through rejection, isolation and symbolic as well as material death of those sectors conceived as a social risk.

Il volume prende in esame, per la prima volta in maniera organica, la 'cultura' delle riviste che nella seconda metà dell’Ottocento ha contribuito a definire il nuovo campo delle scienze criminali. Le riviste "consorelle" hanno rappresentato uno strumento privilegiato di comunicazione scientifica e di politica culturale, rivelandosi luoghi di elaborazione e di intersezione di saperi e pratiche diversi, in grado di formare, orientare, condizionare i principali protagonisti del dibattito penalistico tra Otto e Novecento, non solo in Italia. Questa 'tribuna' fa emergere un quadro fortemente dinamico,  complesso e articolato, attraverso il quale è possibile mettere a fuoco alcuni snodi cruciali del rapporto tra opinione pubblica, cultura giuridica, giustizia penale e garanzia delle libertà.