Italy’s parliament on Tuesday approved a law that introduces femicide into the country’s criminal law and punishes it with life in prison.
The vote coincided with the international day for the elimination of violence against women, a day designated by the U.N. General Assembly.
The law won bipartisan support from the center-right majority and the center-left opposition in the final vote in the Lower Chamber, passing with 237 votes in favor.
The law, backed by the conservative government of Premier Giorgia Meloni, comes in response to a series of killings and other violence targeting women in Italy. It includes stronger measures against gender-based crimes including stalking and revenge porn.
It’s not a redundant law any more than hate crime laws are redundant. You aren’t understanding the premise. It’s not a new crime entirely, it’s like hate crime charges. They can make sentences more severe or reduce the possibility of early release, among other reasons. By the same argument you’re making, hate crime enhancements for violent crime are unnecessary and performative, because those crimes were already illegal.
Hate crime enhancements do work. Why wouldn’t this? In any case, it’s a clear statement being made by society at large that that behavior is unacceptable.
Citation needed.
And just plain old murder isn’t?
You want misogynists (or rather their children; most of the grown ones won’t learn, no matter how many of them you throw in jail) to understand that it’s unacceptable, fucking spend the time and money teaching them it’s unacceptable, and why.
This doesn’t teach anyone anything. It’s just empty political posturing. If it has any perceptible effect on the number of crimes against women (and that’s a very big if) it’ll be to increase them.
I am not suggesting that education shouldn’t happen. It’s the far more effective long term solution, part of addressing the underlying causes of hate-motivated crimes. Hate crime laws do not do nearly enough. However, in the short term, getting those that commit hate (or gender) related crimes off the street for longer is going to save lives, and maybe convince some offenders to change their mind. I think you misunderstood my meaning. Hate crime laws of any kind do not prevent hate crimes.
They do absolutely reduce hate crimes, as those that commit hate crimes are likely to reoffend. The benefits in proactive reduction are hard to prove and collect data on, as are all crime statistics, where there are simply too many variables to account for. However, reoffender rates are easily documented, and a law that takes those likely to reoffend off the street for longer than linked non-hate crimes would is absolutely reducing those types of crimes.