Purpose and structure of the Guidebook

This Guidebook is designed as an aid for judges faced with cases in which the culture of the parties is relevant, and aims at the following purposes:

Streamlining the judicial load, avoiding trial delays and postponements due to difficulties in accessing anthropological knowledge. The judicial load weighs on the Italian justice system to such an extent that its containment is among the main challenges to be overcome for the realisation of an efficient system for the protection of citizens' rights as required by the European Union. In this context, which is already quantitatively emergent, culture-related issues reach the courtrooms with increasing frequency, due to growing migration flows. The phenomenon cuts across several areas of the legal system and concerns, in particular, criminal law (culturally motivated crimes), civil law, family law, migration law, and juvenile law.

Contributing to a fair justice system that takes into account the rights of foreigners and/or persons belonging to cultural minorities. A judicial system cannot be defined as efficient from a quantitative point of view to the detriment of the fairness of its pronouncements; therefore, this Guidebook has not only the purpose of speeding up multicultural disputes, but also of providing a tool for justice. The Guidebook is intended to assist judicial activity that takes into account respect for cultural diversity and encourages a correct hermeneutics of the facts, thus preventing certain behaviours from being misunderstood and framed as crimes or offences without considering the cultural aspect. Since in the Italian legal system the criminal sanction is always the ultima ratio, the Guidebook aims to promote trials in multicultural disputes that are assisted by a correct balancing of the rights at stake, and that are assisted not only by legal but also by anthropological elements;

To disseminate an anthropological sensitivity among legal practitioners, supporting the reading of different culturally determined habits, trying to raise awareness of the potential relevance of the cultural dimensions of the behaviour of foreigners, immigrants and cultural minorities. The 'cultural test' contributes to the reconstruction of an agent's motivational background that takes into account the cultural dynamics of his or her group without relegating him or her to the margins of society. In this way, a continuous dialogue between majority and minority values will be set in motion with a view to a reasoned balancing act, in order to build a pluralist society that incorporates diversity by drawing the greatest possible benefit from it, while also mitigating factors of division and social malaise. The aim is also to avoid misunderstandings and a priori criminalisation of conduct;

Bringing anthropological knowledge into the trial. In a context where university law faculties do not train judges in anthropology, this Guidebook aims to provide the judge with some basic knowledge on the meaning of certain cultural practices and to increase his or her multicultural sensitivity;

To Compensate for the difficulty in finding professional anthropologists. In Italy, anthropologists are not registered in a database (from which the judge may draw to find experts from other fields such as psychiatrists, engineers, psychologists or other professions) and it can be difficult to identify the expert of reference for the subject under analysis. In order to remedy this situation, this Guidebook is intended to provide the judge with some basic knowledge of the cultural practices presented in court.

In the light of these aims, it is clear that the Guidebook is not intended to be an academic-theoretical tool containing an exhaustive description of each cultural practice/habit/behaviour, but rather to be an applied research tool, which is intended to be useful for understanding the way of thinking and behaving of the accused and/or victims, in order to arrive at a reflection on why a certain behaviour is legitimised (or not).
It is, therefore, an initial tool for approaching a multicultural case and may be supplemented, at the judge's discretion, by further research and, hopefully, the assistance of a cultural expert.