For the fifth consecutive year, the 'Rummo' Scientific High School in Benevento opened its doors to the State Police, turning classrooms and corridors into a living civics lesson. The event, 'A Scuola di polizia - Education for Legality and Familiarization with the Police,' drew students from the third, fourth, and fifth years into a full day of workshops, demonstrations, and direct dialogue with law enforcement professionals. The initiative belongs to a broader national effort to rebuild trust between institutions and younger generations through proximity, transparency, and shared experience.
An Institution Steps Into the School
The day opened with remarks from Giovanni Leuci, Chief of Police of Benevento, who framed the event not as a one-way presentation but as a reciprocal exchange - one in which institutions learn from young people as much as students learn from them. School principal Annamaria Morante, a consistent champion of legality-focused education within the institute, reinforced that message: programs of this kind are not supplementary to academic formation, they are part of it. Civic awareness, she has argued, belongs alongside mathematics and literature in any serious curriculum.
The structural ambition of the event was visible in its design. Rather than a single lecture, the day was organized around multiple formats - seminars, mini-conferences, hands-on workshops, and operational demonstrations - each delivered by officers from distinct branches of the State Police. The diversity of formats was deliberate: different students respond to different modes of engagement, and keeping the program varied sustained genuine attention across a long school day.
Digital Dangers and the Postal Police's Message
Among the sessions that generated the strongest response was the contribution of the Postal Police, the specialized branch of Italy's State Police responsible for cybercrime, digital fraud, and online safety. Officers addressed topics that occupy an enormous portion of adolescent life - social networks, messaging platforms, and the broader digital environment - framing them not through prohibition but through informed awareness.
Cyberbullying, online scams, and the protection of personal data were central themes. The Postal Police explained how online scams are engineered to exploit urgency and emotional response, and how personal information shared carelessly on social platforms can be harvested, profiled, or weaponized. For students who have grown up with smartphones as a primary social infrastructure, this is not abstract risk management - it describes their actual daily environment. The conversation about digital privacy, in particular, carried weight precisely because it connected to choices students make not occasionally but constantly.
The relevance of this session extends well beyond the school walls. Cyberbullying among adolescents remains a serious and underreported phenomenon across Italy and across Europe broadly. Online fraud targeting young people - from fake giveaways to phishing disguised as brand promotions - has grown more sophisticated as social platforms have expanded. Law enforcement professionals speaking directly to students, without the mediation of a screen or a curriculum module, offers a form of credibility that printed materials rarely achieve.
Crime Scenes, Detection Dogs, and the Reality of Police Work
The Forensic Police brought perhaps the most visually striking element of the day: a reconstructed crime scene set up inside the school itself. Students observed the investigative methodology used to secure, document, and interpret physical evidence - a process that requires both scientific precision and procedural discipline. Seeing this methodology demonstrated in their own environment, rather than filtered through a television drama, gave students a grounded understanding of what forensic investigation actually involves and the professional standards it demands.
The canine unit added a different register entirely. Drug- and explosives-detection dogs working alongside their handlers in live demonstrations combined genuine operational substance with the kind of direct, sensory engagement that no classroom presentation can fully replicate. The dogs' precision and the handler-animal working relationship drew visible interest from students - not as entertainment, but as a window into a highly specialized form of public safety work that most people never encounter outside a news report.
Why Proximity Between Youth and Institutions Matters
Programs like 'A Scuola di polizia' rest on a straightforward premise: trust between citizens and public institutions is not automatic. It is built incrementally, through repeated contact, honest communication, and demonstrated competence. When young people encounter law enforcement exclusively through enforcement contexts - traffic stops, public order situations - the relationship is inherently asymmetrical. When that contact happens instead in a school setting, on shared ground, the dynamic shifts. Officers become legible as professionals with expertise, not simply as authority figures with power.
Italy has invested steadily in civic education programs that bring public institutions into direct contact with students. The fifth edition of this particular event at the Rummo school signals that the model has earned institutional confidence - from the school's leadership, from the Benevento police command, and from the students themselves, whose level of engagement throughout the day was described as notably high. The session on road safety and drug use among adolescents, areas where behavioral choices carry acute real-world consequences, extended the program's reach from abstract civics into concrete decision-making.
The event also functioned as orientation - an opportunity for students approaching the end of their secondary education to understand the range of professional roles within the State Police and the skills and vocations they require. Forensic work, digital investigation, canine operations, community liaison - these are distinct careers with distinct demands. Exposure to that variety, delivered by practitioners rather than recruiters, offers students a more honest picture than any brochure could.
