In 2021, acquittals were 24.25%; in 2022, up to the end of last October, 23.7 percent. It is mainly men who commit crimes, in 94% of cases, and above all Italians (in 58% of cases) while women are accused only in 5%. gender-oriented crimes: the crimes considered by the analysis are, in particular, ill-treatment of family members and cohabitants, persecutory acts, sexual violence.
«From the analysis of the data – comments Fabio Roia, deputy president of the court of Milan – it clearly emerges how the crimes of sexual violence, ill-treatment against family members and cohabitants, persecutory acts, are crimes clearly oriented by motivations that recall the dominance of the male gender over the female one resulting committed in 94% of cases by men. Still on the level of motivation, the percentage of crimes committed by Italian citizens is significant, 58%, demonstrating that the different cultures where there are underleveling profiles of women in terms of the protection of fundamental rights, in a multicultural reality such as that of the metropolitan area of the court of Milan, still have a minor impact».
Faster processes needed
In particular, in 2021 out of 903 total sentences there were 219 acquittals (24.25%), 578 convictions (64.01%), 106 decisions concluded with a non-suit (11.74%). In 2022 there were 192 acquittals (23.76%); 516 convictions (63.86%) and 100 not having to proceed (12.38%). The sentences of the investigating judge, in the two-year period, lead to acquittal in 16% and in 76% of cases to a conviction; the sentences resulting from the trial lead to acquittal in 37% of cases, and in 57% to a conviction.
With regard to the average duration of the trials, in the phase from receipt of the investigating judge, 94% lasted less than a year; 5% between one year and 1.9 years; 1% more than two years. In the phase from the registration to the hearing the trials lasted less than a year in 34% of the cases; between 1 and 1.9 years in 38%; between 2 and 2.9 years in 20%; between 3 and 3.9 years in 7%; between 4 and 5.1 years in 1 per cent.
«A further fact of particular importance concerns the direct relationship that exists between a shorter duration of the criminal trial and the percentage of convictions, in the sense that where the procedure has a shorter duration, the greater the number of convictions. This data must be interpreted in relation to the typical characteristics of the woman who suffers violence who, during a phase of apparent normality of the relationship or once she has left the violent relationship, tends to withdraw the complaint or in any case to represent a minimization of the facts precisely because of that ambivalence of feelings that distinguishes her relationship with the violent man to whom she remains linked by an at least genetic movement of affection» explains the judge.