“You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people your meet and the books you read.” ~ Charles “Tremendous” Jones, Motivational Author and Speaker
How true that is! Before reading a recent book by Donna Leon, I had never heard of the phenomenal problem with “Baby Gangs” in Italy, or if I had heard something, I didn’t pay attention. And I listen to the Italian news channels on TV nearly every day with my husband but don’t translate the words. My bad!
WHAT IS AN ITALIAN “BABY GANG”?
Is it this? ▼ Or this? ▼
How true that is! Before reading a recent book by Donna Leon, I had never heard of the phenomenal problem with “Baby Gangs” in Italy, or if I had heard something, I didn’t pay attention. And I listen to the Italian news channels on TV nearly every day with my husband but don’t translate the words. My bad!
WHAT IS AN ITALIAN “BABY GANG”?
Is it this? ▼ Or this? ▼
 |  |
Image Source: tuscanynowandmore.com Image Source: restoalsud.it
Unfortunately, we are talking about those children on the right.
Italian Baby Gangs are described by Paul Tierney, writing for independent.co.uk/news as, “Barely pubescent, menacing gangs known to locals as ‘children of the devil’. You hear them before you see them: a low, feral rumble rising to something shrill and uncomfortable. Lungs bellow for prominence, limbs kick and shove. Around the corner they emerge, tanned legs and bum-fluff moustaches, hormones not so much burgeoning as exploding into action.”
These boys and girls, 12 to 15 years old and under, are thought to be a symptom of malaise in Italy resulting from an era of economic crisis. They roam the streets without purpose, some in oversized designer streetwear, shoving one another into the roads, voraciously smoking cigarettes, and taking over the sidewalks “like a squadron of designer rug rats”.
Some believe the gangs are second-generation Italians, some white, some migrants. They don’t share ethnicity or background but invisibility. Children growing up in a vacuum of attention, structure, and love. Nihilistic attacks, often on other young people, have resulted in fatalities
Image Credit: Alamy ▼- Image Source: independent.co.uk/news
Italian Baby Gangs are described by Paul Tierney, writing for independent.co.uk/news as, “Barely pubescent, menacing gangs known to locals as ‘children of the devil’. You hear them before you see them: a low, feral rumble rising to something shrill and uncomfortable. Lungs bellow for prominence, limbs kick and shove. Around the corner they emerge, tanned legs and bum-fluff moustaches, hormones not so much burgeoning as exploding into action.”
These boys and girls, 12 to 15 years old and under, are thought to be a symptom of malaise in Italy resulting from an era of economic crisis. They roam the streets without purpose, some in oversized designer streetwear, shoving one another into the roads, voraciously smoking cigarettes, and taking over the sidewalks “like a squadron of designer rug rats”.
Some believe the gangs are second-generation Italians, some white, some migrants. They don’t share ethnicity or background but invisibility. Children growing up in a vacuum of attention, structure, and love. Nihilistic attacks, often on other young people, have resulted in fatalities
Image Credit: Alamy ▼- Image Source: independent.co.uk/news
WHY NAPLES?
Although Naples is particularly well known in Europe for Baby Gangs, the phenome-non exists throughout Italy--Donna Leon’s book was set in Venice–and the gangs’ ebullient attitude and ill-suppressed violence have become a national dilemma.
Anything can set these undisciplined youth gangs off, resulting in violent attacks, sometimes with multiple fatalities. They are ruleless and, on general principles, go against anything society tells them.
The problem in Naples is characterized as stemming from “…a population who live in silent fear of organized crime...La Camorra." Organized crime knows that in Italy children under 14 cannot be prosecuted to the same degree as an adult and so targets them to commit specific crimes. They can give kids money, cars, designer clothes. In southern Italy, you are always judged by what you wear. It’s a way of showing people how much money you’ve got, or what kind of class you belong to. Kids have to and want to belong to something, and the more popular the better. The young minds are indoctrinated with the idea that you don’t need to go to school or have a career to have it all, and this is how the recruitment begins.
James Anderson, contributing editor at i-D magazine, attributes baby gangs to the internet.
“Being exposed to life, in both its fabulous and gory extremes, does strange things to adolescent minds…To be looked at, talked about, admired or vilified, it’s the classic way of “showing out”. Young people want to do things on their own terms and they are demanding your attention in ever more lurid ways.”
HISTORY OF GANG CUTURE
Youth Gangs are nothing new in Italy. Teenagers for generations have congregated in the piazzas looking for kicks, and it’s mostly been tutto bene. In the mid-1950s, the young swooned to American jazz, immortalized the cup of coffee, and hopped onto scooters to circle the Colosseum.
In the mid-1980s, a “scene” called the Paninari evolved around a pre-McDonalds burger place in Milan named Burghy. This youth gang was right-wing, flashy, show-off kids who wanted to signal how rich their parents were by showing off what they could afford.
However, since the mid-1990s, there have been growing demonstrations of antisocial behaviors in public spaces throughout Europe, causing increased public and political concern with regard to criminal activity. Until about 2000, Italian baby gangs, had not traditionally meant as a 'security' problem, but rather as a matter of educational and social policies.
The advent of social-media, however, is believed to have introduced more violence into juvenile street group activities, including Baby Gangs, and has become a recurrent topic in media representation, a source of citizens' insecurity, and focus of legislative and law enforcement activity. researchgate.net/Youth_deviance
Nowadays, these groups make videos of their activities on mobile phones and post them on the internet, vying for gang dominance. One preferred method of asserting such dominance is the stesa – a term that comes from the word stendere (“to stretch out”) – the gang bursts into a public space, “riding mopeds and firing at random, usually in the air.”
There is safety in numbers, and the baby gang culture definitely understands this. These gangs want to go incognito; they want to look like they are going something illegal – or are really doing it -- and don’t want to be identified.
WHAT IS ITALY DOING ABOUT THIS?
Italy has some stringent laws about how children under 14 are to be dealt with in relation to illegal activities, making it difficult to address the problems with “Baby Gangs”. Because so much of the phenomenon seems to be tied to dropping out of school, in 2023 Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni signed a measure which crackdowns on parents of Italian children who drop out of school. They could even face jail sentences under new steps to counter juvenile delinquency in the wake of a series of high profile crimes blamed on teenagers.
Italy has the fifth-highest share of school dropouts in Europe, 11.5% in 2022, with percentages peaking above 15% in Campania and Sicily, the regions that comprise Naples and Palermo. reuters.com/italy-govt-targets-parents-baby-gang
Although Naples is particularly well known in Europe for Baby Gangs, the phenome-non exists throughout Italy--Donna Leon’s book was set in Venice–and the gangs’ ebullient attitude and ill-suppressed violence have become a national dilemma.
Anything can set these undisciplined youth gangs off, resulting in violent attacks, sometimes with multiple fatalities. They are ruleless and, on general principles, go against anything society tells them.
The problem in Naples is characterized as stemming from “…a population who live in silent fear of organized crime...La Camorra." Organized crime knows that in Italy children under 14 cannot be prosecuted to the same degree as an adult and so targets them to commit specific crimes. They can give kids money, cars, designer clothes. In southern Italy, you are always judged by what you wear. It’s a way of showing people how much money you’ve got, or what kind of class you belong to. Kids have to and want to belong to something, and the more popular the better. The young minds are indoctrinated with the idea that you don’t need to go to school or have a career to have it all, and this is how the recruitment begins.
James Anderson, contributing editor at i-D magazine, attributes baby gangs to the internet.
“Being exposed to life, in both its fabulous and gory extremes, does strange things to adolescent minds…To be looked at, talked about, admired or vilified, it’s the classic way of “showing out”. Young people want to do things on their own terms and they are demanding your attention in ever more lurid ways.”
HISTORY OF GANG CUTURE
Youth Gangs are nothing new in Italy. Teenagers for generations have congregated in the piazzas looking for kicks, and it’s mostly been tutto bene. In the mid-1950s, the young swooned to American jazz, immortalized the cup of coffee, and hopped onto scooters to circle the Colosseum.
In the mid-1980s, a “scene” called the Paninari evolved around a pre-McDonalds burger place in Milan named Burghy. This youth gang was right-wing, flashy, show-off kids who wanted to signal how rich their parents were by showing off what they could afford.
However, since the mid-1990s, there have been growing demonstrations of antisocial behaviors in public spaces throughout Europe, causing increased public and political concern with regard to criminal activity. Until about 2000, Italian baby gangs, had not traditionally meant as a 'security' problem, but rather as a matter of educational and social policies.
The advent of social-media, however, is believed to have introduced more violence into juvenile street group activities, including Baby Gangs, and has become a recurrent topic in media representation, a source of citizens' insecurity, and focus of legislative and law enforcement activity. researchgate.net/Youth_deviance
Nowadays, these groups make videos of their activities on mobile phones and post them on the internet, vying for gang dominance. One preferred method of asserting such dominance is the stesa – a term that comes from the word stendere (“to stretch out”) – the gang bursts into a public space, “riding mopeds and firing at random, usually in the air.”
There is safety in numbers, and the baby gang culture definitely understands this. These gangs want to go incognito; they want to look like they are going something illegal – or are really doing it -- and don’t want to be identified.
WHAT IS ITALY DOING ABOUT THIS?
Italy has some stringent laws about how children under 14 are to be dealt with in relation to illegal activities, making it difficult to address the problems with “Baby Gangs”. Because so much of the phenomenon seems to be tied to dropping out of school, in 2023 Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni signed a measure which crackdowns on parents of Italian children who drop out of school. They could even face jail sentences under new steps to counter juvenile delinquency in the wake of a series of high profile crimes blamed on teenagers.
Italy has the fifth-highest share of school dropouts in Europe, 11.5% in 2022, with percentages peaking above 15% in Campania and Sicily, the regions that comprise Naples and Palermo. reuters.com/italy-govt-targets-parents-baby-gang
◄ Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni
"Juvenile crime is spreading like an oil stain," Meloni said. Indicating that the state had preferred to shy away from tackling the problem in the past, she stressed that "…nobody wants to throw 12-year-olds in jail…the measures are ‘preventative, not repressive’, and are part of a crackdown on youth crime.” wantedinrome.com/news
Although the problem hasn’t gone away since, the measure went into effect, cities and provinces are passing similar laws.
JUST SAYIN’
Sources:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italy-govt-targets-violent-teens-parents-baby-gang-crackdown-2023-09-07/
https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/young-people
https://www.thinktank.vision/en/media-en/articles/young-blood-naples-baby-gangs
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/baby-gangs-italy-causes-consequences-solutions
https://theurbanactivist.com/cohesion/italian-rapper-gets-real-on-baby-gangs/
https://www.familyandmedia.eu/en/baby-gangs-what-they-are-what-they-do-and-what-we-can-do-about-them/
https://www.centromachiavelli.com/en/2021/05/29/milano-capitale-crimine-bande-baby-gang-rapine-degrado/
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/italy-govt-targets-violent-teens-and-parents-in-baby-gang-crackdown
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7730211/
https://www.interno.gov.it/it/notizie/mappatura-nazionale-baby-gang-realta-aumento-italia
https://medium.com/@darkitaly/italys-lost-youth-baby-gangs-and-the-violence-we-refuse-to-see-1a31b835a7d4
https://fra.europa.eu/en/databases/criminal-detention/node/7999
https://www.wantedinrome.com/news/italy-to-crack-down-on-youth-crime.html
https://www.milanopost.info/2025/04/09/legge-regionale-baby-gang/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377336266_Youth_deviance_urban_security_and_moral_panic_the_case_of_Italy
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/italy-young-people-i-bambini-del-diavolo-mafia-organised-crime-fashion-a8525416.html
"Juvenile crime is spreading like an oil stain," Meloni said. Indicating that the state had preferred to shy away from tackling the problem in the past, she stressed that "…nobody wants to throw 12-year-olds in jail…the measures are ‘preventative, not repressive’, and are part of a crackdown on youth crime.” wantedinrome.com/news
Although the problem hasn’t gone away since, the measure went into effect, cities and provinces are passing similar laws.
JUST SAYIN’
Sources:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italy-govt-targets-violent-teens-parents-baby-gang-crackdown-2023-09-07/
https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/young-people
https://www.thinktank.vision/en/media-en/articles/young-blood-naples-baby-gangs
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/baby-gangs-italy-causes-consequences-solutions
https://theurbanactivist.com/cohesion/italian-rapper-gets-real-on-baby-gangs/
https://www.familyandmedia.eu/en/baby-gangs-what-they-are-what-they-do-and-what-we-can-do-about-them/
https://www.centromachiavelli.com/en/2021/05/29/milano-capitale-crimine-bande-baby-gang-rapine-degrado/
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/italy-govt-targets-violent-teens-and-parents-in-baby-gang-crackdown
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7730211/
https://www.interno.gov.it/it/notizie/mappatura-nazionale-baby-gang-realta-aumento-italia
https://medium.com/@darkitaly/italys-lost-youth-baby-gangs-and-the-violence-we-refuse-to-see-1a31b835a7d4
https://fra.europa.eu/en/databases/criminal-detention/node/7999
https://www.wantedinrome.com/news/italy-to-crack-down-on-youth-crime.html
https://www.milanopost.info/2025/04/09/legge-regionale-baby-gang/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377336266_Youth_deviance_urban_security_and_moral_panic_the_case_of_Italy
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/italy-young-people-i-bambini-del-diavolo-mafia-organised-crime-fashion-a8525416.html
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