​The specific reference to the practice of 'mangel', as begging peculiar to some Roma peoples, is not so frequent in supranational or Italian jurisprudence. However, the issue of begging, understood in a general sense, has always occupied an important place in the legal debate and many of the rulings pertaining to it concern precisely the begging practised by the Roma, even if not always explicitly defined as mangel.[1]
The attention paid by legal systems to this practice is mainly due to the fact that it, even though it is linked to the constitutional principle of solidarity (e.g. there is a duty for citizens to help each other therefore begging, being a pacific request of help, is fully legal for adults) - as it is today consecrated in the Italian legal system in Article 2 of the Constitution - is, for some, in contrast with other values, such as those of public decency, security, productivity and work. In fact, it is a practice carried out by subjects without means of support and often marginalised by the majority (in the past represented by those unable to work, the disabled and other subjects within the same citizenship, but today mainly by foreigners and migrants) that brings out inequalities and is often perceived as an annoying element, incompatible with the idea of a modern society that has managed to defeat poverty. This is why begging has often been the subject of interest in state legislation (Sciutteri, 2022),[2] of mayors’ orders that prohibit it in the name of urban decor (Pepino, 2010), and of jurisdictional pronouncements of state and supranational bodies. 
In the Italian context, the many interventions of the Constitutional Court aimed at adapting the criminal provisions on begging, inherited from the Rocco Code (Article 670 of the Criminal Code of Begging, Article 671 of the Criminal Code of Employment of Minors in Begging), to the new solidaristic and pluralistic constitutional framework are particularly significant. In fact, countless questions of constitutional legitimacy were raised between the 1960s and 1990s, based on these provisions. The questions dealt with by the referring judges are quite varied but, if reduced to a minimum, they always concern the contested compatibility of the criminal response to begging against the values and principles advocated in the constitution, in particular with respect to the principle of solidarity and its multiple declinations. For some, the criminalisation of begging contrasted with Article 38 of the Constitution: it acted as an obstacle to the exercise of solidarity in the form of private assistance or, again, it made the weakest subjects bear the burden of the non-fulfilment of the State's duties of assistance, by not providing any form of clemency for those who were forced to beg because they lacked the assistance due. For others, the penalisation of begging implicitly imposed the obligation to work - identified in Article 4 of the Constitution not as a compulsory element, but as a spontaneous one - and was therefore capable of opposing all those ideologies other than the dominant one, which did not envisage work as a founding element of their social system. For others, begging was incapable of causing concrete injury to benefits such as public order and social tranquillity, but constituted harmless conduct, consisting of a simple request for help, perfectly exercisable in relation to the principle of solidarity and individual freedom (Article 2 of the Constitution). Moreover, it was pointed out that the application of the criminal sanction to a person begging out of necessity would violate the principle of reformational punishment under Article 27 of the Constitution.
​Among the most significant responses that the Constitutional Court has given to these issues, it is worth recalling at least three: in pronouncement no. 102 of 24 April 1975, the applicability of the criminal offence of Article 54 of the Criminal Code was admitted, opposed to the state of necessity defence for those persons who had begged because they lacked any means of subsistence (to date not admitted by the majority jurisprudence which does not recognise the state of economic need as the object of the offence); pronouncement no. 519 of 15 December 1995 states the constitutional illegitimacy of art. 670 first paragraph of the Criminal Code - which punished "simple" begging, not harassment - mainly on the basis of the principle of inoffensiveness; pronouncement No. 115 of 22 March 2011 brings out the link between the issue of begging and the exercise of the powers of local authorities to curb it, and although not specifically concerning begging, reaffirms the limits of local government power that had previously expanded to implement forms of municipal criminal law, even in the fight against begging.

The ECHR, in its ruling Lacatus v. Switzerland (19 January 2021), which examined a Swiss penal provision in light of the Convention, deals precisely with a young woman of Roma ethnicity forced to beg because she was completely deprived of any means of subsistence, and states that the penalisation of simple begging, not harassment or fraudulent begging, is in violation of Article 8 of the ECHR, inherent to private and family life, because it punishes conduct that is inoffensive and which is, for some, the only means of survival.[3]
To date, Italian legislation seems to be in compliance with the dictates of the Constitutional Court and the ECHR, as it only criminalises 'harassing' begging (Article 669 bis of the Criminal Code) and begging with the use of minors (Article 600 octies of the Criminal Code), the former introduced as a contravention in 2018 (Decree-Law No. 113 of 4 October 2018), and the latter first sanctioned by Article 671 of the Criminal Code among contraventions and then included among offences against individual personality and for the protection of minors as of 2009 (Law No. 94 of 15 July 2009).[4] This formal conformity, however, does not completely safeguard against the possibility of incriminating 'simple' and non-molesting begging. In a fractured society such as today's, the very activity of begging is often perceived as 'harassing', especially if it is carried out by foreigners who are not incorporated into the productive fabric, as in the case of some Roma groups. Forms of 'simple' begging, however, could in fact also lie behind forms of begging with minors. In fact, it is quite likely that Roma mothers frequently take their children with them during the only activity that can guarantee a minimum form of subsistence, in a context that does not ensure any kind of assistance, not so much with the intention of educating them to delinquency but rather because of necessity and their own conception of motherhood, which involves not separating from one's children, especially if they are very young.
Despite the fact that the aversion against begging, especially when exercised with minors, has as its objective the protection of their interests (thus placing it among the offences for the protection of the individual personality), in concrete application the protection of securitarian logic may prevail. For this reason, the observations that the judges of the 1960s, 1970s and 1990s made with respect to the problem of begging can be particularly useful in assessing the real damaging capacity of such conduct and the compatibility of their criminalisation with the constitutional framework and the principles of the European Convention on Human Rights. These observations are in fact extremely topical and still usable today, in a debate on begging that is enriched by multicultural issues and still stands out in a social context in which access to state assistance continues not to be taken for granted by some.

NOTEs

[1] Cass. Pen., sec. V - 17/09/2008, no. 44516; Edu Court, Lacatus v. Switzerland, 2021

[2] In the Italian penal system, the offence of begging has always been present: however, during the Savoy penal code (1840) and the Zanardelli code (1889), some public security laws provided for exclusions from punishment for persons in a state of need, because they were deprived of any kind of family or state assistance or unable to work; the Rocco code (1930), on the other hand, punished the offence without providing for any possibility of exclusion in Article 670 of the criminal code, by placing it to protect order, decorum and public tranquillity.

[3] The ECHR's ruling is particularly interesting because it surveys the phenomenon of begging. Moreover, in sanctioning the non-compatibility of the criminalisation of non-molestationary begging with the Convention, it reports the observations of two international bodies regarding the tendency of states to repress begging: according to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, the prohibition of begging and vagrancy is a way of making poverty invisible as well as a serious violation of the principles of equality and non-discrimination, which leaves police authorities too much enforcement discretion, inevitably makes people living in poverty more vulnerable to harassment and violence, and facilitates discriminatory social attitudes towards the poorest and most defenceless (Report (A/66/265, 4 August 2011, submitted to the UN Assembly); for the EU body GRETA (The Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, which monitors the implementation of the relevant Convention on Trafficking in Human Beings), criminalisation of begging is not an adequate way to solve the problems of trafficking in human beings for the purposes of exploitation and forced begging, because it punishes the victims rather than the perpetrators.

[4] JURISPRUDENCE. In Cass. Pen. sez. V - 28/11/2008, no. 44516 cited above, the term 'mangel' is explicitly mentioned and the cultural character of the practice is identified as a custom in use among certain Roma ethnic groups. Also on the basis of this reconstruction, which was not accepted by the Roma community itself, the judges of legitimacy derubricated the offence initially ascribed to the parent for employing their children in begging from the more serious case of enslavement (Article 600 of the Criminal Code) to that of ill-treatment in the family (Article 572 of the Criminal Code).
In Cass. Pen. sez. V - 30/03/2012, no. 40666, the Court of Cassation diverted the offence ascribed to the parents of a minor Roma girl for her use during begging from the offence of enslavement (art. 600 penal code) to that provided for by art. 671 penal code, still in force at the time of the facts in the contravention form, considering however the latter as prescribed, valuing in the decision the family context of origin of the minor, considered "serene"; in Court La Spezia, 25/09/2013, no. 650 the mother of a minor is condemned under art. 671 criminal code. with the minimum sentence of 15 days and with a suspended sentence, the defendant is in fact remorseful and there is a positive prognosis that she will refrain from similar conduct in the future; in Cass. Pen. sez. I - 14/12/2021, no. 7140, despite not accepting the possibility of recognising a cultural exemption or that inherent in the state of necessity, both put forward by the defence, the conviction of the father of a minor, again of Roma ethnicity, for the crime under Article 600 octies of the Criminal Code was confirmed, to a sentence of four months imprisonment, with suspension of the execution of the sentence and granting of the general extenuating circumstances; in Criminal Court of Cassation section V - 28/12/2020, no. 37538 the sentence of a grandmother and a mother of a minor for the crime referred to in Article 600 octies of the criminal code was confirmed and the diseducational nature of the practice with respect to minors, in contrast with the need for education, and its value as a negative stimulus also with respect to minors of tender age, was highlighted.
Of all the pronouncements cited, only Cass. Pen. 44516/2008 cited above, defines Roma begging with the term "mangel". In pronouncements no. 40666/2012 and no. 7140/2021, there is no direct reference to the mangel but it emerges that the persons involved in the case are of Roma ethnicity and there is an albeit minimal treatment of the cultural element in the legal arguments. On the other hand, pronouncements no. 650 of the Court of La Spezia and Criminal Court of Cassation no. 37538/2020 do not contain any kind of reference to the cultural element. ​