Meloni shifts burden of proof to minors aged 14 to 18

Meloni shifts the burden of proof to minors aged 14 to 18

Can a 15-year-old prove he did not want to set a bus on fire? Giorgia Meloni's Italy has decided to flip the question: it will be the teenager who has to prove his lack of intent before a violent act, not the state that must show he knew what he was doing. Until now, the burden fell on the prosecution, which — under the approach being debated — made it almost impossible to escape reprisals. The shift, inspired by the model used against kale borroka (street violence) in the Basque Country, points to a second front: making parents pay for the damage caused by their children.

The bill lands on the family

The mechanism has two channels. If the damage is to public property, it is resolved as a direct administrative sanction on the parents. If it affects private property, the victim can go to court and immediately obtain an enforceable order requiring the parents to pay for the destruction. The logic comes from civil law: liability for another person's act. Spain's Article 1903 already regulates this subsidiary civil liability, and Article 1902 obliges anyone to repair damage caused by fault or negligence.

Underlying it all is the precedent cited as proof that the financial stick works: when families' assets started to be touched for their children's acts, the kale borroka phenomenon eased noticeably. The thesis is simple and unromantic: when the kid burns a bus and the parents' home answers for it, parental control improves by magic.

Does it apply only to the new offence or to the whole catalogue?

The question hanging over it all is scope. In principle, the text refers to the new offence of participation in violent demonstrations, but some are calling for it to be extended to all offences committed by minors. And there the age debate begins: it is argued that at 13 a person already distinguishes perfectly between intent and its absence, which would push for reforming Spain's Minors Law. Recidivism, at any age, is pointed to as the criterion that should trigger the measures.

Not everyone sees it the same way. One current warns that reversing the burden of proof is a double-edged weapon: if it is used to smother any focus of protest and not just violent acts, the remedy may end up doing more harm than the disease. The core objection is one of principle: proving innocence has historically been the terrain of the inquisition, not of modern law.

The pace of social change and the legislative mirage

Against the enthusiasm for the decree comes the sceptical voice: peaceful social change requires educational and cultural transformations over at least two generations, and no law can replace them. The criticism notes that unless the problem is tackled at its root — with education as the battlefield — these things will keep happening, with minors or with adults. The rule arrives, but the substrate remains intact.

The discussion also drifts toward the broader framework of security and immigration, with positions demanding tougher control measures and others branding them stale authoritarianism. There the analysis dissolves into noise. The concrete, the measurable, is the reversal of the burden of proof and the parents' financial liability. The rest is dinner-table conversation.

In the end, the uncomfortable question is not whether the minor must prove his innocence. It is how long it will take someone to realise that the kid without a court-appointed lawyer has no idea how to prove a lack of intent.