Naples, "Young people aren't afraid of prison, they're afraid of being invisible."

Naples – To give a face and a voice to the dramatic numbers in the Dis(armati) report, we traveled to the outskirts of Naples. We met Antonio, a street social worker who has been working in "borderline" neighborhoods for fifteen years. We interviewed him in a bar not far from Via Metastasio, the very place where the car of the businessman who was a victim of racketeering was burned a few days ago.

Antonio, the data shows that in the first six months of 2025, 27 minors were reported for homicide. You, who are on the streets every day, how do you explain this increase in violence?

What you see in the data is just the eruption of a volcano. Beneath it, a magma of loneliness has been bubbling for years. Today, a 14-year-old boy doesn't see violence as a crime, but as a language. If you don't have the words to express your discomfort, if you don't have a place where you feel like you belong, then a gun or a knife becomes your calling card. These 27 cases are the failure not of the kids, but of the entire system around them.

The report speaks of "low-cost recruitment" by the clans. How does this connection occur?

It's ruthless marketing. The clan offers what the state doesn't: a sense of belonging, protection (false, obviously), and instant cash. For a fourteen-year-old, seeing the neighborhood "boss" with a luxury car and thousand-euro shoes is more seductive than a school education that guarantees nothing. The clans know that minors are less at risk of criminal offenses, so they use them as cannon fodder for "stese" or extortion. They are disposable soldiers.

There's a lot of talk about a punitive approach, like the Caivano Decree. Is it working?

Prison alone is a university of crime. If you take a kid who's made a mistake, lock him up in a cell for months without any serious educational program, and then put him back in the same alley as before, what do you think will happen? He'll return to the streets with more anger and more criminal contacts. Control is necessary, of course, but punishment without rehabilitation is just a way to clear the collective conscience.

What is really missing in these neighborhoods to reverse the trend?

There's a lack of free space. If the only place where young people can congregate is the drug dealing center, crime will always win. We need:

Schools open until the evening: Not just for lessons, but for sports, theater, and music.

Street educators paid fairly: We can't rely solely on volunteers.

Real job opportunities: Many of these kids are brilliant, incredibly resourceful. If that genius were channeled legally, we'd have future managers, not future prisoners."

Is there a recent episode that particularly struck you?

"A few days ago, a boy said to me: 'Antonio, I'm not afraid of dying at 20, I'm afraid of living like my father for 80 years without ever having anything.' This is the real emergency: the lack of hope. Violence is their way of saying 'I exist.'"

If you could speak to policymakers right now, what would you ask?

"To stop managing Naples like a perpetual emergency. We need structural investments in young people, not just more patrols. Disarming young people means, first and foremost, giving them something other than a gun: a book, a job, a sense of dignity."