For the fifth consecutive year, the 'Rummo' Scientific High School in Benevento opened its doors to officers from multiple branches of the Italian State Police, turning a regular school day into an intensive civics exercise that reached students across three year groups simultaneously. The initiative, known as A Scuola di polizia - Education for Legality and Familiarization with the Police, is designed not as a ceremonial visit but as a structured program of practical activities, workshops, and demonstrations intended to close the distance between young people and public institutions. In a period when trust in state authority among adolescents is frequently discussed but rarely cultivated in formal settings, the format offers a deliberately different approach.
From Institutional Greetings to a Simulated Crime Scene
The day opened with remarks from Giovanni Leuci, Chief of Police of Benevento, who framed the event in terms of institutional responsibility - arguing that the connection between law enforcement and schools is not optional but essential to a functioning civic culture. Principal Annamaria Morante, a consistent advocate for legality and prevention-focused education within the institute, was equally present and equally committed. The tone set from the outset was collaborative rather than authoritative, which appeared to shape how students engaged with the sessions that followed.
What distinguished this edition from a conventional information day was the breadth and specificity of its programming. Officers from the canine unit brought drug- and explosives-detection dogs for operational demonstrations - the kind of concrete, visible police work that is difficult to convey through a classroom lecture. The Forensic Police went further still, reconstructing an actual crime scene inside the school building and walking students through evidence collection methodology and investigative sequencing. For many students at this age, such exposure to the procedural reality of law enforcement carries genuine orientational value, offering a grounded picture of what these professions actually involve.
The Postal Police Address What Students Already Live With
Among the most attentively received sessions was the contribution from the Postal Police, the branch of the State Police responsible for cybercrime and digital safety. Their presentation covered cyberbullying, online fraud, responsible use of social media platforms, and the protection of personal data - topics that sit at the intersection of adolescent daily life and civil law. The relevance here is not abstract. Young people spend substantial portions of their lives in digital environments governed by terms and conditions they rarely read, subject to data practices they rarely understand, and exposed to social dynamics that carry real legal and psychological consequences.
The Postal Police's educational role in this context reflects a broader institutional recognition that digital literacy and digital safety are no longer supplementary concerns - they are central to personal security and civic participation. Cyberbullying, for instance, is not simply a social problem between peers; depending on its form, it may constitute criminal conduct under Italian law. Online scams increasingly target younger demographics through social media channels precisely because those platforms are trusted and familiar. Understanding what constitutes a risk and what constitutes a rights violation requires a level of digital fluency that formal school curricula, across most of Europe, have been slow to integrate.
Why Repeated, Structured Contact Between Youth and Institutions Matters
The significance of this event reaching its fifth edition is not merely logistical. Sustained, repeated programs build familiarity in a way that one-off visits cannot. Students who attended these workshops in their third year and then again in their fifth year arrive with a different baseline - they carry prior context, they ask more specific questions, and they are more likely to view law enforcement as a professional institution rather than an abstract authority.
This model - embedding police representatives into educational programming across multiple departments, from forensics to digital safety to road safety - positions legality not as a set of prohibitions but as a framework within which civic life operates. The practical orientation component also deserves attention: for students approaching the end of their secondary education, direct exposure to the operational realities of various police units constitutes a form of professional guidance that many schools simply do not provide. It does not recruit; it informs. That distinction matters in how young people relate to the state and, ultimately, to one another.
