For the fifth consecutive year, students at the 'Rummo' Scientific High School in Benevento spent a full school day alongside officers from Italy's State Police, exploring everything from forensic investigation to the hidden dangers of the internet. The initiative, formally titled 'A Scuola di polizia - Education for Legality and Familiarization with the Police,' drew students from the third, fourth, and fifth years of the institute, generating a level of engagement that organizers and school staff described as exceptional. In a period when trust between young people and public institutions is under persistent strain across much of Europe, events of this kind carry weight that extends well beyond the classroom.
Building Institutional Trust Through Direct Experience
The event opened with remarks from Giovanni Leuci, Chief of Police of Benevento, who spoke to the strategic importance of connecting law enforcement with the school environment. His message was direct: institutions that remain distant from young people forfeit the opportunity to shape civic understanding at the moment it forms most durably. School principal Annamaria Morante, who has consistently supported programmes centered on legality, prevention, and civic education throughout her tenure, framed the initiative as part of a broader commitment to producing graduates who understand not just academic subjects but their responsibilities as citizens.
That framing matters. Civic education in Italian schools has historically been subject to the familiar pressures of curriculum overload, and dedicated time for substantive engagement with public institutions is rarely guaranteed. The 'A Scuola di polizia' format addresses this gap by replacing abstract instruction with direct contact - students did not read about police work; they observed, asked questions, and participated.
Digital Dangers Take Centre Stage
Among the day's sessions, the contribution from the Postal Police attracted particular attention. Officers from this specialist unit, which in Italy holds primary responsibility for cybercrime and digital security matters, addressed a range of threats that are immediately relevant to the lives of adolescents. The topics covered - cyberbullying, online fraud, the responsible use of social networks, and the protection of personal data - reflect the actual risk landscape facing young internet users.
Cyberbullying remains a significant concern among Italian teenagers, as it does across comparable European countries, and the consequences for mental health and social development are well documented at a general level. Online scams, meanwhile, have grown more sophisticated, with methods such as phishing, impersonation, and fake prize schemes increasingly targeting younger demographics who may be less alert to the warning signs. The Postal Police's involvement gave students access to the kind of practical, operationally grounded guidance that generic digital literacy curricula rarely provide. Officers can describe not only what threats exist, but how investigations into them actually function - a dimension that shifts the conversation from passive awareness to active understanding.
The privacy dimension of the session deserves particular note. Discussion of how personal information circulates online, how platforms collect and process user data, and what protections citizens have under Italian and European law equips students with knowledge that will remain relevant throughout their adult lives. Italy operates within the framework of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, which grants citizens meaningful rights over their data - but those rights are only effective when people understand them.
From Crime Scenes to Canine Units: The Full Breadth of Police Work
The Forensic Police unit created one of the day's most memorable experiences by reconstructing a simulated crime scene within the school itself. Students were shown the methods used to document, collect, and preserve physical evidence - techniques that require precision, methodological discipline, and an understanding of how mistakes at the scene can compromise an entire investigation. Forensic science sits at the intersection of chemistry, biology, and legal procedure, and exposure to this complexity at secondary school level can meaningfully influence how students think about evidence, proof, and the rule of law.
The State Police's canine unit added a different register entirely. Detection dogs trained to identify narcotics and explosive materials carried out live demonstrations that drew visible enthusiasm from the student audience. Beyond the spectacle, these demonstrations served a serious pedagogical purpose: they illustrated the relationship between specialised training, operational effectiveness, and public safety in concrete rather than theoretical terms.
Seminars on drug use among adolescents and road safety rounded out a programme designed to address the full range of risks that young people are most likely to encounter. Officers leading these sessions combined statistical context with personal experience - a combination that tends to be more persuasive to a secondary school audience than institutional messaging alone.
Orientation as Well as Education
What distinguishes 'A Scuola di polizia' from a standard civic awareness programme is its dual function. Alongside its educational aims, the event operates as a concrete orientation experience, allowing students approaching the end of their secondary studies to examine the professional realities of a career in law enforcement. The State Police encompasses a wide range of specialisations - from cybercrime investigation to forensic analysis to canine handling - and exposure to that breadth at the school stage can inform decisions that students are beginning to make about their futures.
Reaching its fifth edition, the initiative has demonstrated the kind of institutional durability that separates a one-off event from an embedded programme. The continued commitment of the Rummo school's leadership, combined with the sustained engagement of multiple State Police departments, suggests a collaborative model that other schools and police jurisdictions could reasonably consider replicating. The relationship between young citizens and the institutions that serve them is not self-sustaining; it requires deliberate, repeated investment. This event, modest in scale but coherent in purpose, represents exactly that.
