Francesco Gianniti (Oriolo, 4 October 1921Oriolo, 11 August 2017) was an Italian jurist and humanist. He was Filippo Grispigni’s student at the University of Rome and Silvio Ranieri’s disciple at the University of Bologna.
He was a professor of law and criminal procedure, a criminal lawyer and a criminal judge.
Thought The cornerstone of his criminal-criminological thought, perfected over the years also on the basis of the experience gained in the exercise of judicial and forensic activity, is the idea that, for the purpose of effective action to combat crime, it is necessary to processing of an organic criminal policy program, which contribute, in addition to the penal legal disciplines (criminal law, criminal procedure and penal law), criminological experimental disciplines (in particular, psychology, sociology and criminal anthropology, forensic medicine and criminology, criminal statistics and scientific police).Francesco Gianniti, Le discipline giuridiche penalistiche e le discipline sperimentali criminologiche, in Giust. pen., 2017, part II, cc. 672-689 This program should move along the following lines:Francesco Gianniti, Criminalistica, Milan, Giuffrè, 2011, pp. 29-30, 207-208; Francesco Carrara e la Scuola positiva (intervention carried out at the International Conference held in Lucca and Pisa from 2 to 5 June 1988), in Francesco Carrara nel primo centenario dalla morte, Milan, Giuffrè, 1991, pp. 648-649; L'opera scientifica di Silvio Ranieri e problemi attuali di politica criminale (speech held November 22, 1975 in the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna), in Arch. Pen., 1976, pp. 160-163.
prevalence of the principle of prevention with respect to that of repression; study of the crime no longer only as a legal entity, but as a human and social reality, moving from crime in the abstract to its author in concrete; diagnosis of the personality and prognosis of the dangerousness of the subject who commits criminal activities, in this investigating what there is of "freedom", but also of "necessity" or "conditioning"; flanking of the inductive-experimental method to the deductive-rational method in the study of the individual and social phenomena of crime; affirmation of the rights of the accused before the arbitrators of the public authorities, accompanied by measures to protect the community and the person offended by the crime; search for the multiplicity of factors of crime (as an individual phenomenon) and crime (as a social phenomenon); determination of a plurality of remedies to counteract the endogenous and exogenous factors of the crime and the political and social factors of crime; individualization of the sanction and of the treatment, in the sense that the sanction, in the phase of the penal trial, and the treatment, in that of the penal execution, must be adapted to the particular personality of each subject; a tendency towards a broad decriminalization of minor offenses and provision of substitute sanctions and alternative measures to detention; rehabilitative penitentiary treatment for the social reintegration of the condemned.
The criminal-criminological thought of Francesco Gianniti is characterized by the tension to satisfy, with the aid of the bio-sociological disciplines of crime, the practical needs of the penalistic disciplines and the preference given to the interdisciplinary and comparative method in the study of criminal law, substantive and procedural.The importance attributed to the methodological profile emerges in his most recent writings: Francesco Gianniti, Metodologia giuridica e dogmatica processuale penale, in Giust. pen., 1957, I , cc. 481-486.
In this regard, he argued that: "the science of criminal prosecution - similar to criminal science (but unlike the science of the civil trial) - does not end in juridical investigation (criminal procedural law), but extends to psychological investigation (psychology criminal and criminal judicial psychology) and is completed in the sociological survey (criminal process sociology and criminal judicial sociology) .The three surveys - while remaining autonomous for diversity of object, nature and method - are mutually complementary: law, psychology and sociology in fact, they give rise to inquiries that are necessarily different but inextricably linked in an interdisciplinary study of the criminal trial"Francesco Gianniti, Criminalistica, cit., p. 39; L'importanza della psicologia e della sociologia nel processo penale, in "Studi in memoria di Girolamo Bellavista", in Il Tommaso Natale, Palermo, 1977, p. 223..
From here, the particular conception that Francesco Gianniti had of the criminal lawyer, and, in particular, of the criminal judge.
Precisely it was his conviction that: "the jurist (and especially the criminal lawyer, understood in a broad sense) can not limit himself to dogmatics, that is to the exclusive study of the content and scope of the juridical norms in force, making a systematic elaboration; but, anchoring the conceptual elements to human and social reality, it must also investigate concrete problems, referring to a particular society, urging and helping the legislator in the arduous task of implementing the most suitable reforms. Therefore, an interdisciplinary study is necessary to guide the legislative policy in the fields - inextricably linked - of the substantive and procedural criminal law, of the judicial and penitentiary system"Francesco Gianniti, Prospettive criminologiche e processo penale, Milan, Giuffrè, (1977), III ed., 1984, p. VIII..
As for the criminal judge, "these - he wrote - in addition to being endowed with a serene and strong balance and a strict self-control power, he must possess not only the logical finesse of the jurist and the spiritual wealth of the humanist, but also the introspective acumen of the criminologist. He, therefore, must examine and know the personality of the individual delinquent (that particular murderer, that particular robber) in order to be able to concretely and completely judge him. ... As the doctor studies not only the disease, but that particular patient, because this represents "a clinical case", to which the most appropriate therapy must be practiced; so the judge, after having ascertained that a person has committed a crime, must study the unmistakable characteristics of the personality of that particular offender in order to impose on him the most appropriate sanction. If the culture of the criminal judge was limited to being exclusively juridical, criminal justice should deal only with the crime and not with the personality of its author. Ultimately, the criminal judge, in order to properly exercise his complex and delicate function, must assess not only the evidence concerning the crime (so-called judgment on the fact) but also the evidence concerning the suspect or accused person (so-called judgment on author of the fact)"Francesco Gianniti, Criminalistica, cit, pp. 186 - 187; l problema della specializzazione del personale per la prevenzione della criminalità (intervention carried out in the Conference of legal studies on the problems of prevention, held in Bologna, May 15–16, 1954), in Critica pen., 1954, pp. 284- 285..
Cultural Area Reference A scholar of the main works of the Italian criminal tradition starting with Cesare Beccaria,Francesco Gianniti, Le dottrine criminalistiche dopo Cesare Beccaria, in Giust. pen., 2007, II, cc. 609-617; Prospettive criminologhe e processo penale, cit., pp. 15-155. who formed the "heart" of his legal library,Francesco Gianniti, after the publication of his last monograph Criminalistica (2011), now ninety years old, donated part of the volumes to the libraries of the Court, the Council of the Bar and the University of Bologna, retaining for himself the works in criminal matters- criminological. Francesco Gianniti had particular interest in those of Francesco Carrara and Enrico Ferri. In a speech at the international conference held in Lucca and Pisa in 1988, on the occasion of the centenary of the death of Carrara, he notedFrancesco Gianniti, Francesco Carrara e la Scuola positiva, cit., pp. 645-650 the significant convergence of the above two distinguished criminalists on the different function of law and criminal procedure, especially as the work of both was directed not to the systematic elaborations, but to the reform of the current penal legislation on the basis of new managerial criteria. According to Carrara, these were "the dogmas of supreme reason, which existed before all human laws and which must be observed by the penal legislator"; according to Ferri, instead, they were the "criminal substitutes", that is, the reforms that must be carried out by means of laws concerning economic and political, civil and administrative, and which, in addition to favoring social evolution, tend to indirectly implement preventive defense against crime, especially opposing the factors social.
Francesco Gianniti collaborated for many years with the magazine Positive School.The magazine "Scuola Positiva", founded in 1891 by Enrico Ferri, was directed: from 1947 to 1956, by Filippo Grispigni and, from 1959 to 1972, by Silvio Ranieri. In the journal Francesco Gianniti published his first article. One of his articles also appeared in the latest issue of the magazine. Well aware of the "irrevocable civil and juridical conquests of the classical School" - which he considered mainly represented, as well as by Carrara, Pellegrino Rossi and Enrico Pessina - he recognized himself in the Positive School, which was anticipated by Gian Domenico Romagnosi, Carlo Cattaneo and Giovanni BovioFrancesco Gianniti, La problematica penale nel saggio critico di Giovanni Bovio, in Scuola pos., 1972, p. 469. and represented mainly by Ferri, Cesare Lombroso and Raffaele Garofalo. However, he did not share either the denial of free will, supported by Ferri, nor the importance attributed by Lombroso to the somatic factors in the causal explanation of the criminal phenomenon.Francesco Gianniti, Criminalistica, cit., pp. 27 and 34; cfr. also pp. 199-202. He attributed the merit to the Positive School:Francesco Gianniti, Criminalistica, cit., pp. 139 and 213; Prospettive criminologiche e processo penale, cit., pp. 59 and 92. to have supported the need to resort to prevention before repression, being the former much more effective than the second; to have moved the fulcrum of the penal law from the crime to the author of the criminal conduct, giving life and impulse to the criminological disciplines; to have affirmed the educational finalism of the penalty, anticipating a principle later consecrated in art. 27 paragraph 3 of the Constitution.
He argued that the prevention measures (the so-called criminal substitutes of Ferri) are a more effective means of social defense than penalties in the fight against crime: "a provident civil and administrative legislation " can modify, more effectively than penalties, "the factors social, economic and political, which prepare and facilitate crime".Francesco Gianniti, Prospettive criminologiche e processo penale, cit., p. 165; Criminalistica, cit., pp. 138, 206-212; L'opera scientifica di Silvio Ranieri e problemi attuali di politica criminale, cit., pp. 160-161; Le misure di prevenzione nelle prospettive positiviste e nella loro realizzazione normativa (communication carried out in the IX Study Conference "Enrico de Nicola", held in Alghero, 26–28 April 1974), in Le misure di prevenzione, Milan, Giuffrè, 1975, pp. 162-167. And it was persuaded that the prediction of a plurality of sanctions, the imposition of a punishment adequate to the personality of the subject and a penitentiary treatment adapted to the personality of the condemned person were consistent with the spirit and values of the Constitution.