Among the youngsters of Nisida, ever smaller and more violent

It does not clarify whether he was referring to Emanuele, who died, or to the person who killed him: the first investigative hypotheses point to another 15-year-old, as a possible killer, together with an accomplice two years older, in a context of a clash between gangs from different neighbourhoods. It does not make it clear and the thinking - in a way - may apply to both. Being stopped in time, for some children with guns, can make the difference between life and death. Some of them know it today, that they are alive also because they were arrested earlier. Almost by chance. Just as it was by chance that Giovanbattista Cutolo, Giogiò, the 17-year-old musician murdered in Piazza Municipio last year or like others before him, died.

In some contexts, 'where you grow up with the idol of who does the most harm or who has the most designer shoes, you shoot each other for nothing (even for no real reason, ed.)', the boys recount. "Even in my neighbourhood we grew up with the myth of who had the 500 euro shoes and the gun. And so to give yourself importance, to get close to that idol, you get caught up in something bigger than you are,' is the consideration of those who are now facing complex and tiring paths of awareness. In the desert of opportunities in certain areas, especially where school drop-outs, unemployment and economic difficulties touch higher percentages than elsewhere, it can become too easily an option whoever puts 'a' means (a scooter, ed.), 'na gun and 'nu poco e' rispetto' in your hand, as another 15-year-old detained here a few years ago said during a meeting with the mother of another young victim of violence by juveniles. Here may be one of the origins of the resentment of these very youngsters, who in the Ipm also learn, however, that taking up a weapon is always a choice. More or less consciously.

"When I was little, I had a lot of anger. Anger because I felt pain: that's the emotion I learnt to recognise. Today I can handle it,' says the most muscular of the boys I meet, with his story tattooed on his biceps. He has learnt to talk about emotions after a series of encounters, which go to the heart of that complex simmering of certain adolescents who, abandoned on the street without goals, can become a pressure cooker. Even Libero, the mascot dog that accompanies every step, 'was very angry when we found him, abandoned by who knows who', they tell me. Now that he has been 'adopted' by them all, he is very good, obedient and tame.

Il teatro di Eduardo

Il teatro San Ferdinando di Napoli riprodotto su uno dei muri dell’Ipm

At the moment in the Nisida Ipm there are numbers that were not reached even in the most difficult months of the season of the so-called "paranza dei bambini", when - around 2015-16 - the phenomenon of minors enlisted by the Camorra - and then of a growing juvenile criminality - imposed itself as an emergency and the arrests made the 60 admissions peak. At present, there are seventy-six guests: only a handful in mitigated custody, all the others in the perimeter of the prison proper. With the perimeter walls, the repeated gates, the grates on the windows and the laundry hung out - as in any prison - to close the gaze on the shimmering sea of this inlay of the Phlegrean coast, which simultaneously shows both its failures and its riches.

The travails of Bagnoli, with the rusting steel of the Italsider and the latest redevelopment projects and - on the other side of the coast - the dazzling beauty of the Literary and Natural Park of Nisida, included in the Fai routes, cared for with the work of some of these youngsters too. All this in the Campi Flegrei red zone due to volcanic risk, as recalled by the presence of a geologist engaged in inspections.

While organised crime has been enlisting juvenile labourers for several years, 'our boys are getting smaller and smaller', confirms the director of the Ipm, Gianluca Guida, a life spent for these children with too much life and too many abandonments already behind them. Most of them have final sentences, but not all of them, and with the numbers of admissions on the rise, with the same spaces and the same operators (26 actual admissions; 6 holidays), it is becoming increasingly complex to build the most suitable path for each of the boys through the many workshops active in the institute visited three years ago even by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, together with the then Minister of Justice, Marta Cartabia: from pastry-making to pizza-making to catering, from ceramics to construction to handicrafts.

In addition, of course, to the schooling courses: 13 attend literacy courses; 11 compulsory schooling; 6 secondary school; 13 the three-year hotel operator course; 15 the catering operator course; 5 the high school entrance courses, according to data - updated in mid-September - from the statistics office of the Department of Juvenile and Community Justice of the Ministry of Justice.

They are getting smaller and staying longer, a sign of long sentences for serious crimes. "For a long time we no longer have the so-called 'revolving doors', guys who were in and out in a short time," says Director Guida. "Now they have more challenging sentences, most for property crimes - aggravated by violence and the use of weapons - but more and more are also arrested for crimes against the person, murders, attempted murders, violence."

A change - together with the increase in the presence of foreigners, especially Maghrebi, in a majority that remains of young Neapolitans - that also leads to changes in the treatment paths to 'know how to accompany them in the complex phase of adolescence, looking beyond the contingent'.

From behind the grates of a window, on the second floor, a squeaky voice asks the director what the expression found among the magistrate's communications means: 'restorative justice'. "When you try to fix what you broke a little," is the first response - of frame - he receives from downstairs.

Together with the director and the commander, I walk along the avenues of the Ipm, past ochre-coloured buildings, a football pitch, the chapel, walls decorated with mosaics and lawns full - at lunchtime - of dishes and plastic bottles thrown from overcrowded cells. A way of denouncing one's own malaise. The debate on the causes of overcrowding, which does not only concern this Ipm, is open and articulate. For the Antigone association, it leads straight to the effects of the Caivano Decree. At least in these parts, the operators are actually not convinced so far, analysing the numbers. But on this day they are above all busy coping with the different needs and multiple problems that each of these young lives has behind it and their management as a whole.

Some of the boys have started a journey of awareness of their violent actions. "Trying to also understand the emotions of the victim and their family members. I didn't think about it then,' two of them recount. Then it is the time of the crime. Today, it is the time of the sentence to be served, of awareness of the actions, but also of hope. With training, a few jobs - such as the one that earns EUR 500 for those who have been hired by the cooperative "Nesis, gli amici di Nisida", which makes ceramic objects popular especially as Christmas gifts; or those who have had the opportunity to attend an internship with famous pastry chefs, such as Rolando Morandini.

Here then, this 'little island', according to the etymology of the name Nisida from the ancient Greek, can really be the first real landing place, to try to change one's life and 'understand even the evil you have done', says one of the 'pescetielli' or 'muschilli' (little fish or gnats), as the very young people who move in packs in the overcrowded alleys of tourism or in the service of the clans are called in Neapolitan dialect. Here they find points of reference in the educators and the entire Ipm team. Outside, the parents - when they are not from criminal families - 'are alone', reflects one of the operators. The boys nod, as if to say that mum and dad had tried to make them avoid certain drifts.

The city's crime news bounces quickly around the island: there is another 20-year-old injured. But there is also the volleyball match about to start. And there is the sea outside and the beauty, which helps to heal.