Tag: Restorative Justice

“Dentro il carcere”. Interviews with Mary Gibson, Patrizio Gonnella, Amir Issaa, Dacia Maraini and Maria Giustina Laurenzi on Imprisonment

Author di Elena Bellina e Matteo Brera

Introduction

Imprisonment is a contested topic and, in the Italian context, new interest in captivity has recently emerged in response to the need of questioning the impact of a variety of forms of imprisonment on the national memory and identity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Italian case is an extremely fruitful testbed to evaluate to what extent the transformations occurred to culturally relevant forms of imprisonment through the last century have shaped the public discourse and have been represented in different contexts, thus contributing to actual social and cultural changes, especially during the recent COVID-19 and migrant crises.

The derelict state of Italian penal institutions and dated penal system came under scrutiny and became a matter of public discussion especially during the Seventies, when a decrepit system still profoundly rooted in fascist regulations and laws was faced with unprecedented challenges and was exposed by activists, artists, filmmakers and intellectuals as in dire need of urgent reform.

Violence within and outside the walls of the penitentiary were the backdrop against which the legislator attempted to change a system heavily informed by punishment and lacking any basic element of restorative justice, while common practices ensured the conditions and treatment of inmates – and women in particular – were often appalling and unsuitable to a modern democratic state.

In this contribution we navigate the changes and the long-standing flaws of the Italian carceral system ‘from the inside’ through four interviews[1] with five people who, at various levels, have worked on and in some cases experienced directly the prison and its impact on human beings.

Mary Gibson (Professor Emerita of History and Italian Criminal Justice at John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York), Patrizio Gonnella (President of the NGO Antigone, Professor of Sociology and Philosophy of Law at Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy, and practitioner in criminal justice environments), Amir Issaa (first generation Italian-Arabic artist, writer, and educator actively engaged with the Italian prison setting), Dacia Maraini (Italian writer, activist, and once internee in a World War II Japanese POW Camp) and Maria Giustina Laurenzi (Italian director, actress, writer, and screenwriter) discuss their own experience of captivity and work within the Italian prison system from five different yet intertwining perspectives based on their personal views of captivity, incarceration, restorative justice, and safeguarding of the inmates’ human rights.

Their remarks ideally frame the key issues investigated by the research essays included in this issue. Their interviews give life to an engaging dialogue on the multifaceted nature of captivity among scholars, practitioners, artists and writers that better contextualises the present debate on Italian incarceration, offering remarks on its present and future challenges as well as on possible ways to induce a productive exchange between people “inside” and “outside” the carceral world.

Mary Gibson discusses the history of the Italian criminal justice system from the Italian Unification up to the present day. She offers insights on what historians can do to broaden the field of study focusing on the role played by the Italian penitentiary in the shaping of modern and contemporary Italian culture and society, underlying the need for new research on the topic.

Patrizio Gonnella addresses the current state of Italian prisons from the privileged viewpoint of his role as President Antigone, an NGO whose yearly reports monitor and put in the spotlight the conditions of inmates serving their time in Italian prisons, especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Gonnella also focuses on the challenges posed today by chronic overcrowding of obsolete facilities amid waves of unregulated immigration.

Amir Issaa discusses his first-hand experience of the Italian prison system and the role that music and writing played in his upbringing as a first-generation Italian-Egyptian rapper in a family whose internal dynamics were heavily affected by the incarceration of his father. He also describes his recent projects and collaborations as an educator with juvenile correction facilities as well as in cultural spaces, associations, and higher education institutions in Italy and in the US.

Finally, Dacia Maraini tackles the question of captivity starting from her own experience in a WWII Japanese concentration camp as a child and her pioneering on-field surveys on women’s detention and exploitation carried out in the 1970s and 1980s and published both in the form of journalistic reportages and works of fiction, such as «Paese Sera»[2]. Her work has been pivotal to bring into the public discourse the subterranean world of female incarceration, which her long-time friend Maria Giustina Laurenzi vividly portrayed several years later in her documentary Donne di un altro mondo (2005). Laurenzi rounds off this series of interviews with a fond recollection of her work in the Fuorni correctional facility in Salerno, which she observed through the eyes, the words, and the bodies of the protagonists of these human tragedies – but also the vivid hopes and dreams – of the women serving their sentence in a small penitentiary in Southern Italy.

Interview with Mary Gibson, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

and Graduate Centre at the City University of New York

EB, MB: Could you, please, introduce yourself and explain what your relationship with captivity and the carceral system is?

MG: I am a Professor Emerita of History at the City University of New York (CUNY), where I taught undergraduate students at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and doctoral students at the City University of New York Graduate Centre. Much of my teaching involved the history of crime, particularly at John Jay College, which offers special majors – such as criminology, legal studies, forensic psychology, and forensic science – that attracted students aspiring to careers as lawyers, police officers, or administrators in the criminal justice system.

I was a good match for John Jay College because my scholarship had, from the time of my dissertation research in the 1970s, focused on what was then referred to as the “social control” of “marginal groups”. I was particularly interested in the variables of gender and sexuality in relation to the labelling of certain behaviours as deviant and their management, usually in a repressive manner, by the legal apparatus of the state. This scholarly inquiry has led to a series of books that lie at the intersection of the history of crime, in a broad sense, and the history of women and gender: Prostitution and the State in Italy, 1860-1915 (1986)[3]; Cesare Lombroso and the Origins of Biological Criminology (2002)[4]; and translations, with Nicole Hahn Rafter, of Lombroso’s classic works: Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman (2004)[5], Criminal Man (2006)[6]. My most recent book, entitled Italian Prisons in the Age of Positivism, 1861-1914 (2019)[7], examines prison reforms and changing modes of punishment in the wake of the Italian Unification and until World War I.

However, my interest in prisons, internment, and enclosure is not new, and I have always been committed to prison reform as a political and humanitarian issue. I have visited several prisons: the women’s reformatory in Iowa (the state in which I had my first teaching job); the women’s jail at Rikers Island in New York City (where I took my Masters’ students); and the women’s prison at Rebibbia in Rome (where I interviewed a young and intelligent female assistant warden). I have also given several “prison tours” to scholars at the American Academy in Rome to educate them about the many carceral spaces that constituted an important and visible aspect of Rome during the last five centuries and which played an important role in everyday life. During the 1990s, I was a member of the Advisory Council of the Women in Prison Project of the Correctional Association of New York. Thus, although my research has always been strictly academic, I am engaged in the issue of prisons as a political issue and hope that my writings have provided a useful historical context for socially engaged activists today.

EB, MB: What are the milestones that shaped the evolution of the Italian prison system, especially from Italian Unification to WWII?

MG: In terms of legal history, the main milestones in Italian history were marked by the national prison laws of 1860-1862, 1891, 1931, and 1975. However, while each of these large pieces of legislation reshuffled the administrative categories of the complicated network of Italian institutions of confinement, only the regulation of 1891 brought significant – although still limited – improvements to the lives of inmates. The laws of 1860-1862, approved during and immediately after the Unification, significantly brought together all the disparate prisons of the peninsula into one network under the control of the Prison Division of the Ministry of the Interior. Emblematic of this project to integrate the differing carceral systems of the former old regime states was the creation of a new secular corps of male prison guards, who were dispersed across the new nation. However, because the early laws were simply inherited from the Kingdom of Piedmont and imposed on a vast array of buildings that were often in physical degradation, they embodied no new vision of prison reform.

The law of 1891 ushered in a period of progressive change to the now unified, but still uneven and mostly unreformed, national network of prisons. The new Zanardelli Penal Code of 1889, which eliminated the death penalty, also abolished hard labour in the bagni, one of Italy’s most shameful institutions.[8] Male convicts, most of whom had laboured in chains in shipyards, construction, and land reclamation, were now assigned to indoor confinement where, through a regiment of education and professional training, they would ideally graduate to low-security institutions and finally parole. However, women’s prisons remained unreformed and administered by nuns, who emphasised religious conversion and moral purification rather than the more secular goals of education and professional training typical of male institutions. A similar gendered pattern was repeated in the case of children: teachers replaced prison guards in boys’ reformatories, but nuns retained control over interned girls. Clearly, the state considered only men to be citizens (and boys future citizens) of the new Italy.

On paper, the fascist prison law of 1931 appears surprisingly similar to that of 1891 but as of yet few historians have investigated the actual conditions inside Italy’s prisons during the interwar period. Most research has focused on confino, a system of internal exile imposed on “dangerous persons” who were mostly political opponents of the regime but also homosexuals, Jews, and Slavs. Often without trial, both men and women were sent to confinement in island camps or small towns in the southern provinces. Mussolini also reinstated the death penalty for “crimes against the state” and, in 1938, approved a series of Racial Laws to restrict the rights of Jews and Blacks and prevent race mixing. It is likely that the “regular” prison system (for non-political offences) was also infected by fascist politicisation, as was the case in Nazi Germany, but more research is needed.

What is clear from the state’s own statistics, however, is that the number of people, including children, institutionalised in prisons, internment camps, criminal and civil insane asylums, and youth reformatories increased notably during fascist rule and deserves more attention as one of the many violent methods employed by the regime to discipline the civilian population.

The period after World War II, as after the wars of unification and the First World War, saw little immediate change to prison legislation or everyday prison life. For example, female religious orders remained in charge of women’s prisons until the 1970s. The national prison law of 1975 and the Legge Gozzini of 1986 promised modest reforms to Italy’s prison system.

EB, MB: As an American woman, how did you first start studying the Italian prisons and why did you decide to work on the history of Italian women’s prisons? How has the treatment of incarcerated women historically differed from the treatment reserved to men in Italy? Has the Italian carceral system developed any special paths in relation to gender treatment compared to other carceral systems you are familiar with?

MG: My specialisation in Italian history came late in my doctoral studies. I had entered graduate school with an interest in European, and particularly French, social theory but gradually abandoned intellectual history for the new historiographical trend in the 1970s, namely “history from the bottom up”. Because social history was understudied for modern Italian history, I decided to pursue my dissertation research – on nineteenth-century Italian prostitution – in Rome rather than Paris.

For me, prostitution offered a way to explore the lives of a group of poor women, who were subjected to a state policy of legalisation and police regulation that differed markedly from the criminalization typical of the United States. Only after I began to read legal sources did I develop an interest in what American historians call criminal justice history, or the complex system of law, courts, police, and prisons that have been used to manage and discipline “marginal” groups. As I tried to master this field, I kept my focus on women in terms of the gendered nature of the criminal justice system and of the response of early feminist organisations to the plight of prostitutes subjected to the national regulation system. I also read Cesare Lombroso’s Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman (1893)[9], which led to my subsequent monograph (2002)[10] on the gendered nature of his extremely influential theory of the “born criminal”, which labels prostitutes as atavistic, and prostitution as the most prevalent and dangerous form of female crime.

This combined specialisation in the history of women and of law/crime led logically to my more recent research on prisons for several reasons. First, when searching for readings for my courses, I realised that almost all studies of prisons had focused on the experience of men, with a few exceptions such as the books of Nicole Hahn Rafter (2004)[11] and Estelle Freedman (1981)[12] for the United States and Lucia Zedner (1991, 1992, 2004, 2009)[13] for Britain. Second, my dissertation research on prostitution had coincided with the publication of Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975)[14], and his argument that modern prisons employed enclosure, discipline, examination, and surveillance to disempower inmates proved useful in my analysis of two other “closed” institutions in nineteenth-century Italy: the licensed brothel and the sifilicomio, or the lock hospital, for the forcible treatment of prostitutes with venereal diseases. Third, when researching an article on anti-communist women between the two world wars, I had been shocked (perhaps naively) by discovering that, once arrested by fascist police, communists like Camilla Ravera[15] were interned in prisons managed by nuns. Finally, I had a longstanding commitment to prison reform as a political issue, particularly in respect to the paucity of resources (education, libraries, types of professional training) devoted to women’s institutions in the United States. At this point, I formulated a project to break the silence about female prisons that had characterised both the reform movement after Italian unification and current historiography.

EB, MB: As a historian of an Italian prison system which is by now – at least on paper – distant in time, what do you think are the relics of the past that you see as surviving in Italian prisons? Do you think that Italy has been able to move past the Lombrosian approach that characterised its origins?

MG: While I have not studied current Italian policy in any depth, I would note both improvements in the Italian prison system as well as fundamental problems that persist from the early years after Italian unification. In terms of gender, the Antigone NGO has recently released a comprehensive and excellent report (2023)[16] based on visits to all women’s penal institutions as well as government statistics. This report is especially important because it breaks the general silence about and disinterest in female prisons that has endured for over 150 years. A comparison of this report with my own research offers a mixed picture. One striking continuity is the low rate of female incarceration, with women making up only about 4 per cent of all inmates during both the late nineteenth century and the early twenty-first century.

In both periods, most women were primarily arrested and detained for minor property crimes rather than for prostitution or other types of “sexual” offences stereotypically associated with them. Once in prison, women in both periods have been assigned primarily to domestic tasks or “female” occupations such as garment making, both of which are repetitive and lowly paid. Education has been generally unavailable above the primary level. However, the report has several bright spots: not only were religious orders replaced by professional and secular female personnel in the 1970s, but the physical structures have been replaced or modernised. Rather than large dormitories, women now live in the same types of cells as men (usually with 4 persons) and enjoy a higher ratio of teachers and doctors per inmate than their male counterparts. In short, gender disparities have been attenuated.

Other problems have persisted or even gotten worse since the founding of the Italian prisons system. For example, the European Union has reprimanded Italy for the overcrowding of its penal institutions, which typified many penal institutions in the nineteenth century. Despite an easing of this problem over the last few years, on 30 April 2023 the number of inmates exceeded official capacity by about 10 per cent. An additional problem, which has plagued the Italian prison system since 1861, is the high rate of individuals being held in pretrial detention. Averaging over 40 per cent in 2000, the number has recently declined but the backlog remains. Because many incarcerated suspects will be subsequently absolved at trial, the inefficiency of the courts causes enormous injustice to them and to their families.

EB, MB: Where is the research work on the history of the Italian carceral system situated today? As a scholar who has devoted most of her life to the topic, what are the research areas that should be improved today in relation to persistent historical problems and future challenges that affect the Italian prisons?

MG: Research in modern Italian prison history is currently experiencing a renaissance. The publication of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1977)[17] sparked an outpouring of similar research globally but curiously little in Italy. Despite important contributions from scholars such as Michele di Sivo (2002)[18] and Luigi Cajani (1997)[19] on the early modern period, the topic has remained mostly unexplored for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, a new generation of scholars – including Christian de Vito (2016)[20], Chiara Lucrezio Monticelli (2012)[21], Francesca di Pasquale (2018, 2019)[22], Elena Bacchin (2020, 2022, 2023)[23], Ilaria Poerio (2018)[24], and, in the U.S., Steven Soper (2020)[25] – are currently bringing attention to the centrality of penal institutions to modern Italian history not only through their own publications but also by organising conferences and special journal issues devoted to the topic.

Yet, much remains to be done. For the liberal period, many topics that I introduced in my book require further research, such as the variation in prison conditions across Italy (particularly between the north and the south) and among the many types of penal institutions (jails, long-term penitentiaries, youth reformatories, camps of internal exile, and asylums for the criminally insane). Even more important is the need to explore internment during the fascist period. Aside from some excellent research on confino as a punishment for political prisoners[26], little is known about whether the policies of the “regular” prison system became more repressive under Mussolini’s regime. Finally, the postwar period, except for the excellent book by Christian de Vito[27] and studies by feminist criminologists, is gravely understudied. It is to be hoped that more scholars in all fields will focus their research on the plight of women and men in Italy’s institutions of confinement.

Interview with Patrizio Gonnella, President, Antigone ONLUS;

Professor of Sociology and Philosophy of Law, University of Rome

EB, MB: Could you, please, introduce yourself and explain what your relationship with captivity and the carceral system is?

PG: My name is Patrizio Gonnella. I am the President of Associazione Antigone, which works with criminal justice and prisons. It monitors the conditions of imprisonment, but it is also in charge of conducting social research on the controversial subject of rights for people deprived of their liberty. Furthermore, I teach Philosophy and Sociology of Law at Roma Tre University’s Department of Law, and, alongside Susana Marietti, I host the radio show Jailhouse Rock on Radio Popolare, where we tell the stories of musicians who wound up in jail[28].

My relationship with imprisonment and incarceration dates back to 1993, when I began my career as Assistant Director of correctional institutes. I later also served as Director, and after that I committed my time and efforts in this field to Associazione Antigone instead. I have had many international assignments related to this field[29].

EB, MB: Based on your work leading Antigone and the annual reports that the Association prepares, what are the greatest challenges that the Italian prison system must face?

PG: The Italian prison system is a complex one that must first take on the great challenge that is rejecting the belief that prison is the only possible form of punishment.

The numbers, however, tell us that it currently is the primary form of punishment, and the one that is favoured most often. The numbers, to mention only the Italian case, are brutal: almost 57,000 people are held in prisons with an overcrowding rate of almost 120 per cent, placing us at the top of the list of European countries with the most crowded prisons. The main challenges we face are residualising prisons, diversifying the system of sanctions, and decriminalisation. Instead, we are living through a historical moment during which it seems like imprisonment is the answer to everything. We talk about raves in Italy and the answer is prison; we talk about heterological surrogate motherhood and the answer is prison. A broader cultural understanding of young people’s lifestyles is always lacking, starting with drug use, which affects the Italian social and penitentiary systems – one in three prisoners are there because of drug-related offences. This is the sign of a penal and penitentiary system that has, essentially, become the last frontier of welfare – this is where we find the poor, the marginalised, the immigrants (although the numbers have decreased compared to what they were in the past, they make up 31.5 per cent of the prison population), and many people with psychiatric problems. From this perspective, the amount of psychotropic medications distributed in prisons is extremely significant, and it requires us to consider the discomfort that prison operators have to face. It is not easy.

EB, MB: With the 2017 Orlando Reform, there was once again an attempt to overcome age-old criticisms of the Italian penitentiary system, such as the institution of preventive detention. In this sense, how do you judge the legislator’s recent and projected efforts?

PG: The legislator hasn’t proposed anything new since 2018. The impending elections made it so that when the reform passed, it had already been pared down. Few regulations were approved; regulations that were essentially theoretical, nothing that had an actual effect on the conditions of inmates. Nothing that would, for example, modify the internal arrangements for appointments or phone calls, free up access to the internet, give prisoners the possibility of having more relationships with the outside world without excessive pressure, increase the prospects of social recovery through real investments in areas like work or school, introduce specific rules regarding women or foreigners – essentially, the changes were very minimal and very insignificant. It is true, however, that the number of people in pre-trial detention is lower compared to 20-30 years ago: today, the amount is more or less 26-27 per cent, though the numbers are still higher than the European average. Discussing a reform of the prison system is not productive in terms of electoral consensus. On the contrary, the belief is that it kills anyone who dares to touch it – anyone who speaks of prisons will lose votes, lose consensus. It is an unpopular subject. And in this historical phase, political parties have given up on taking on a pedagogical role. Prisons essentially become a tool for trying to get votes rather than a way to educate on constitutional legality.

EB, MB: The condition of prisoners and life in prison often go by unnoticed by public opinion. The pandemic has contributed to dramatically resurfacing the debate on prison overcrowding and the fragile balance of interactions between inmates and prison staff. With this in mind, what are the main challenges that the COVID crisis is leaving behind?

PG: In a way, I think that COVID-19 has been a missed opportunity. During the pandemic, we dealt with prisons by trying to prevent them from becoming places of contagion. Prisons are the perfect place for epidemics to spread, as we saw in the United States for example. We had a debate about this in Italy, which in part led to a reduction in numbers largely due to the work of prison operators and the judiciary when it came to both awareness and surveillance. This led to an increase in measures such as home arrests and home detentions. With the pandemic, video calls and technology finally made their way into prisons. At the time, they were absolutely fundamental in order to ensure that prisoners were not completely isolated from their relationships with their loved ones. I remember that we had several riots and 13 deaths within Italian prisons, because at one point, everything shut down without any proper explanation about what was happening. But unfortunately, the battle seems to have been ultimately lost. There is fear surrounding technological innovations, and today it has once again become very difficult for inmates to obtain permission to have contact with the outside world. There is no way to access the internet in prisons, not even for those who are studying or for foreigners who want access to information in their own languages. Video calls have arrived, yes, but they do not work as they should, in the sense that unfortunately inmates in many prisons are granted the possibility of making a call only once a week for ten minutes, which is an insignificant amount of time. This, of course, given the fact that many inmates commit suicide (85 in 2022), is a sign that should push us towards finding another solution – suicide is a form of isolation, of loneliness, and an additional phone call in a moment of desperation could save lives.

EB, MB: When it comes to the issue of overcrowding, the penitentiary system has to face the repeated, and at this point constant, “crises” of immigration that put the entire system under pressure. Based on Antigone’s experience, what is your position on the matter, and what are the possible solutions that you feel you can suggest?

PG: Migration. Well, prisons are precisely the place where any visitor can realise that there are so many migrants who have very difficult lives behind them, and so many who are facing paths of induced illegality. This is probably a challenge that we should all undertake, so that we can, on the one hand, tackle the overcrowding issues; on the other, we can try to find a different way to do things. If we were able to find a way for foreigners to have individual paths to legalisation – removing them from the darkness, from the condition of invisibility, from black market labour – we would also likely be removing them from criminality. And this is the solution that I would like to propose: pragmatism when it comes to dealing with the migrant issue, as opposed to dogmatism.

Interview with Amir Issaa, Artist, Writer, Activist, and Educator

EB, MB: Could you, please, introduce yourself and explain what your relationship with captivity and the carceral system is?

AI: My name is Amir Issaa, and I was born in Rome in 1978. My father was an Egyptian immigrant, and my mother was an Italian woman. My first “encounter” with the Italian criminal justice system and imprisonment was when I was very young and the police raided my home, taking my father. This is one of the first memories I have of life, one of the ones that has marked me the most and that I still carry with me today. From that moment on, my father was in and out of prison, and to me he was always a figure with a blurred outline, almost like a ghost. Unfortunately, it’s true that my father had participated in criminal activities. However, the fact that he was an immigrant resulted in significant difficulties when it came to seeking justice for him and my family. As a kid, I shut myself off – I didn’t talk to anybody about these things, partly because my mother had taught me that we shouldn’t talk about prison at school, with friends, and with acquaintances because the experience of incarceration was, in a way, rejected by society. I felt embarrassed to be the son of a prisoner, and, furthermore, there was also the question of ethnicity and identity. At that time in Italy, while we were still in the early stages of a cultural shift that is now fully underway, I not only couldn’t say that my dad worked in a bank, at a company, or at a bar like everyone else at school, but I found myself with a different name as well. You know, my mom actually changed my name from Amir to Massimo – this is the story I wrote about in my first book, Vivo per questo (2017)[30] – in order to facilitate the process of my integration; almost to make me feel like the other kids.

EB, MB: Your life as a teenager in Rome was marked by your father’s imprisonment. How did this experience also come to influence your life from a professional point of view?

AI: Throughout all of this, I would go visit my father, who was first in Rebibbia, then in Regina Coeli [the two main prisons in Rome] and later was also transferred to other Italian prisons. I experienced the life of the family member of a prisoner, which is truly draining, because prisoners are often transferred from one day to another… My mother would ask for time off from work to go see my father, and we couldn’t even spend the night in the city where he was being detained, so we would have to go back home to Rome. When you are related to a prisoner, in a way you also become part of and a victim of the system.

Even things that can seem commonplace, like delivering a package to your loved one, become a source of frustration. The ‘package’ was, in fact, just a brown bag – I’ve mentioned it in a few songs – not unlike the paper bag that held the bread you bought at the tobacco shops by Rebibbia or Regina Coeli. You had to put anything you were bringing in there, like clothes or food. Often, due to bureaucratic reasons, some days they wouldn’t accept this type of food or that shirt because buttons were placed in a certain way… I would watch my mother spend hours preparing a dish for my father only to have to take it back home: one of the toughest memories of my life. Another traumatic memory – which I talk about in a chapter of my book Vivo per questo[31], which was published in translation in the United States as This is what I Live For (2023)[32], and that isn’t only the story of a rapper, but also the story of a kid, a boy who has lived through this familiar journey – is due to the urbanistic location of prisons in Rome. While Rebibbia is in the suburbs, Regina Coeli is in the heart of the city, right across the river from the Virgilio High School. A prison in front of a school is something diabolic: sometimes, I would go see my father right as the students were leaving school. I had friends there, and the hip hop scene was all in Trastevere, too… Once, I remember hiding to avoid being seen because my friends didn’t know anything… The prisoners, too, know that right there, a few metres from their cell, city life is bustling… Emotionally, it’s a terrible thing.

EB, MB: As an artist and activist, how do you see the role of those who, like you, do work inside prisons from the outside? Do you think that this is an important way of building a bridge between “the inside” and “the outside”?

AI: Certainly. At this point, I have been going to prisons as an activist and educator for years, and I have realised that there is so much activity within prisons. Many “outside” people, driven by organisations like Caritas, invigorate a world that is still too subterranean, often untold but very present – the world of the people who use their own knowledge to build this “bridge”. And here, pedagogy is essential. In 2021, I wrote Educazione Rap[33], in which I talk about both my personal activities and the possibilities of rap on a didactic level in schools and penitentiaries. The Turin International Book Fair involved me in a project last year that took me to the city’s juvenile detention centre – the Ferrante Aporti correctional institution – to write verses with the young inmates. When I entered, I found myself faced with 80 per cent North African kids, minors who for the most part had arrived in Italy all alone on the infamous “barconi” by themselves. They had found themselves committing crimes driven by hunger, not by an attraction to the criminal world. The great problem I encountered was a lack of communication: if you have a prison filled with so many kids who can only speak Arabic and don’t know Italian, why can’t you bring them educators who speak their language to help them? This creates only barriers, not bridges! Then ghettos are created within the prison as well because those who speak Arabic stay only with those who speak Arabic, those who speak Albanian stay only with each other, and so on… Our presence as educators in the prisons serves to raise awareness of these problems, these barriers. And to try to fight them together.

EB, MB: Thinking about the re-education goal of these punishments that is clearly foreseen by the Constitution of Italy (Article 27), what do you think your impact on the carceral experience of prisoners could be? How have prisoners and the carceral world impacted you and your artistic production?

AI: Generally, there isn’t much concern for what happens during and after sentencing. In my opinion, there really isn’t a true re-education system. After prison, the prisoners go on with their lives, and society continues to marginalise them at a physical and mental level. Former prisoners are often stigmatised by everyone, and every time, even in the attempt to provide re-education opportunities inside prisons, I have to face a personal trauma once again, too. All of these activities I organise are accompanied by great emotional baggage, because each time I go back into a prison I relive this trauma. When I was contacted by the Comunità di Sant’Egidio to present Vivo per questo[34] inside Regina Coeli and donate it to the prison library, so many people on the outside would ask me, «But what are books doing in prisons?». Society does not think that a prisoner could explore literature, study, or do so many positive things inside a prison. But all of these opportunities always come from someone who gets their hands dirty and attempts to undermine the mechanisms of a system that is, essentially, very conservative. In any case, there is a beautiful library inside the Regina Coeli prison where prisoners can take books, read them, and… now my own book is there, too! As someone who would go to that prison as a child to visit his father, it is a beautiful feeling. From the day of the presentation onward, I began to hold meetings and writing labs with the prisoners. All of this went on for a couple of months, and for the first time I found myself spending a lot of time writing and trying to make something with people who were older than me, and people who sometimes didn’t speak Italian, only Arabic. Trying to coax out an expression, or even only a line, that for someone in there might be incredibly important, and might be their only opportunity to express what they are thinking. And all of this was happening with incredibly limited resources because you can’t bring almost anything into a prison. Sometimes, I found myself spending two hours with the inmates, but without speakers or a microphone. In my small way, I think, I bring something different, something new, into the prisons where I work; something that also comes at the cost of great exhaustion and the traumatic aspects that these activities entail.

EB, MB: In your recent collaboration with the Fondazione Treccani Cultura, your work focused on the juvenile prison population. What principles drove you to approach this particular group of detainees?

AI: At a certain point, I understood that, just like my father, there were people in prison who were fundamentally good people who had gotten “lost” in society. The Comunità di Sant’Egidio contacted me and proposed the first activity, the first writing lab – writing rap – in the juvenile prison of Casal del Marmo in Rome. I carried out this project for two months in Casal del Marmo, which is a very complex environment, for two months. Most of the minors I met there were of Roma origin, and that should already make us all reflect. Roma youth perhaps face the most discrimination, and among them there is a significant percentage of children who go in and out of prison, because when they are let out there isn’t a re-education system to support them in any way. If they are let out of prison and return to a Roma camp, unfortunately they find themselves immediately returning to the lives that brought them in the day after. I began to organise activities with them, making them write verses, listen to songs. Upon noticing that they had a limited – to say the least – language proficiency I had to develop new techniques as needed. For example, I asked those who didn’t know how to write in Italian to write in Romani; I would ask those who couldn’t write at all to draw, maybe some graffiti. Essentially, I tried to develop the kids’ creativity. I myself rap, but in some cases, if you don’t know how to write – if you can’t read or can’t use language – writing rap becomes incredibly difficult. The idea was to involve everyone, and we even managed to put together a final performance with all of the kids that was covered by «Repubblica»’s magazine «XL». It was a beautiful experience, but it also helped me understand the difficulties that exist when bringing a “recreational” activity, so to speak, into a place like a prison, because even minors are seen as delinquents by society and the prison management. All activities done in prison, including the most recent one with Treccani, are exhausting, because instead of being facilitated by the system they are hindered by it. You are challenging the status quo, their fragile equilibrium, the rules they believe are necessary in order to keep kids and adults shut inside as much as possible, letting them out only for some air. Even bringing them somewhere else, maybe to a room where we could create a pleasant moment with the music, with cinema, was sometimes a true undertaking… But I don’t want to be misunderstood and generalise too much: I have encountered managers and prison guards who have a great deal of humanity in them and are aiming for change. Sometimes, though, there is still a lot of hostility: you want to bring in something that is outside of the norm, even creative and playful, and this is not always well received.

With Treccani Cultura, we have started a beautiful project named Ti Leggo, aimed at introducing minors to literature. Treccani gifts them a dictionary and books and contributes to the renovation of some prisons’ libraries. They brought me in for an activity in two juvenile prisons: one in Airola, which is in the Campania region, and the other in Calabria, in Catanzaro. I began meeting with the kids so we could write together, and there I met other people who lead these kinds of activities, like Lucariello, a Neapolitan rapper who is also a social worker. While I work on our projects, some other people can help the prisoners record themselves in a studio instead. This, of course, has a great impact on these young inmates, because they have the possibility of sending something out into the world from the inside. As long as they are still in prison, simply completing the project is, of course, a great source of pride for them. But when you explain to them that they will be able to have their words and thoughts reach the outside world, well, this holds an incredible emotional weight.

At the Gozzini prison in Florence, there is even a recording studio – it is an amazing project. Then there is Sbarre Mic Check, a project that wants to be the voice of inclusion through rap. It began in the early 2000s and has produced several compilations, and even has a YouTube channel. It is a shame that these things are only very rarely spoken about.

EB, MB: Based on your experience, how do you think that the relationship between educators and the carceral world is evolving and can evolve from the perspective of a more effective re-education process?

AI: One idea would be to no longer see prison as something that is detached from society. Prisons are a part of our society, so the life of a prisoner doesn’t disappear and end the moment he is imprisoned; it is simply one moment. He could return to live in society, so it is not only necessary to deal with what is happening at the punitive level, but rather with what a man’s life outside of prison could be. Otherwise, the discomfort and marginalisation will simply develop into more anger, more outbursts against society, and it will cause people to feel ostracised and likely commit other crimes that take them back inside. We need to avoid creating a “second-class” citizenship: if you were in prison, you can’t work; if you have been in prison, then you have to work harder to be able to find a job.

There also isn’t a system where the community welcomes young people who get out of prison and helps them re-enter society, especially in the case of foreign inmates. For example, a Moroccan fruit vendor, a call centre worker, someone who has his own business, someone who works legally, could perhaps help these kids to regain their place in society once they get out. But right now, all of this is simply utopic.

Talking about these things is necessary. We talk about them every now and then when a case explodes in the media – we have talked about the abuses that have taken place in Italy recently, regarding the overcrowding of prisons during the pandemic. But it is still a very uncomfortable topic to talk about. In the common imagery, the bad people are “in there”, we have put them in there and are now at peace with ourselves. We put them in there and the good people are outside, when we know full well that this is not the case. Talking about all this, it’s already being part of the change.

Interview with Dacia Maraini, writer, intellectual, activist,

and once interned in a World War II Concentration Camp in Japan,

and Maria Giustina Laurenzi, filmmaker, actress, author and screenwriter for RAI

EB, MB: Could you, please, introduce yourself? What is your relationship with captivity and the carceral system?

DM: My name is Dacia Maraini, and I am a writer. My interest in prisons began with my experience in a Japanese concentration camp where I was detained for two years as a child, from 1943 to 1945. Then, once I was back in Italy, I conducted an investigation on female prisons around the entire country, and this taught me many things about imprisonment in times of peace. I have always asked myself whether prison is necessary for societal stability. Is it not a form of revenge that should be abolished? On the other hand, shouldn’t punishment be inflicted on people who commit crimes against society? I do think that social justice in a democracy requires some form of punishment for committing crimes; however, it should not be based on the principle of retaliation, but rather on re-education through schooling, (paid) work, and reintegration into society.

MGL: My name is Maria Giustina Laurenzi. I began doing theatre in my small provincial city, Salerno, when I was 14, and from then on, I have not stopped working in the entertainment world. I created a woman-only group (TEATRA), and I met Dacia Maraini at a feminist theatre conference. She asked me to direct a play of hers in Rome. From 1979 to now, we have continued to work together on theatre, on some short films, at RAI, and on several cultural documentaries. I teach theories and techniques of cinematographic language and have a video-theatre lab at Salerno’s mental health unit of the National Health System (ASL) for young people with early psychosis.

EB, MB: How did your experience in the Japanese concentration camp in the 1940s mark your interest in the condition of imprisonment in its various iterations?

DM: I have mentioned the camp often, but it wasn’t until my most recent autobiographical novel titled Vita mia (2023)[35] that I talked about daily life in the concentration camp. The days in the camp were extremely difficult because of the unbearable hunger – they didn’t give us anything to eat beyond what was needed for mere survival – because of the incessant bombings, because of the earthquakes, because of the sadism of the guards who enjoyed triggering our fears and humiliating us. I remember, for example, that they would eat in front of us as we starved, and in the end, they would toss a fish bone or a slice of rotten tangerine and laugh when they saw us run to collect their scraps. I also remember the pointless harassment, like how they prohibited us from leaning our backs against the wall when we sat on the benches when the wall was the only source of relief for the weakness that overcame us. Or, also, how the letters that arrived from Italy were exposed behind the glass at the reception but never delivered to us. As I grew up, I wondered why sadism explodes when people acquire absolute power over others. Is it possible that power perverts the soul of those who wield it? In the end, my response to this question has been that this is exactly what happens. Power corrupts ‒ as a wise man once said ‒ but absolute power leads to absolute corruption[36].

EB, MB: In the 1970s, your feminist activism and your artistic and journalistic production intertwined. How were the stories of women in prison that populate your production throughout those years born?

DM: They were born out of my visits to Italian prisons and the people I met. One in particular, whose life inspired me to write the novel Memorie di una ladra (1972)[37]. Teresa, the protagonist of the book, was illiterate but incredibly intelligent and full of life. I learned so much about the life of thieves driven by starvation in the postwar period. I have always divided the proceeds from the book with her and I gave her half of the proceeds from the film adaptation Teresa la ladra (1973)[38] that I wrote alongside Monica Vitti, who acted as Teresa.

EB, MB: During your 1970s investigation for «Paese Sera», which is incredibly current and yet has in a way been “suspended”, you have been anticipating a debate on female incarceration for many years that has yet to be addressed. How did this project come about, and with what objectives? What impact did it have on public opinion today, and on institutions (for example, the legislative or political class)?

DM: I think that female prisons have changed a lot since then. Today, those who are imprisoned are almost all foreigners linked to drug trafficking. At the time, they were Italian girls and women who were thieves or murderers. However, the female carceral population was very small compared to the male one. Years later, in the 1970s, I went to many meetings in prisons, both male and female institutions, alongside judge Silvano Anania (1936-2018). Together, we created the Rebibbia prison’s library. We held many meetings with incarcerated members of the Red Brigades. They had many interests but didn’t want to talk about themselves. Today, I am on the jury of a prize named Goliarda Sapienza for writings by prisoners.

The condition of prisons has always interested me, because of the connection with my incarceration as a child. During my long life, I have often dealt with both prisons and convents, which served as lifelong prisons for girls throughout many centuries. I discovered this while writing La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa (1990)[39] and researching the life of women in the eighteenth century – even in wealthy families, all possessions went to the oldest son. The other male children were sent to the army to become soldiers or ended up as priests. Of the daughters, the two or three most beautiful ones were married off and the rest were locked away in a convent. It’s important to know that every mother had five, six, even ten children. So, there were many girls who ended up imprisoned in convents.

EB, MB: Do you think that someone should start this conversation again today? How would it be possible half a century later?

DM: I think so. But first, it would be necessary to visit prisons throughout the entire country, as I have done in my time, and properly understand what things have changed and what the current situation is.

EB, MB: Giustina Laurenzi has continued your work in a way, documenting the lives of these women “inside” the prison in Donne di un altro mondo (2005)[40]. Giustina, can you describe your experience as a documentary maker focusing on female imprisonment?

MGL: I walked into the Fuorni prison during a warm day in July. My crew and I were swiftly taken to a sunny courtyard where about ten prisoners chosen specifically for us by the prison director himself sat on the ground in an orderly fashion. «But we wanted to film them in their cells; that was the agreement», I said, clearly angry. «No, not the cells!», they replied dryly.

And so, with the sun beating down on us, by the sea in that place that looked nothing like a prison, it felt like we had gone on vacation with a group of inmates. But we got to work right away, because we only had two days. The idea was to have the women create a documentary about life in the prison, and before anything else we tried to find a title all together.

A voice from the back yelled, «Donne di un altro mondo!» [Women from Another World] and another added: «Subtitle: Not Allowed, because nothing is allowed in here». A thunderous laugh broke the somewhat embarrassed tension that had built up, and they all began to tell stories directly, without censure or false modesty. Their language was so different from that of the prison guards, who we were also asked to interview. The stories of these women both young and not so young had violence, poverty, and abuses of all kinds as a common denominator. One of them had given birth to her first child at 14; another, who chose to be the videographer, was named an accomplice to murder because her current boyfriend had killed her ex. Yet another was a prostitute who served as her own pimp, and another told us that for the girls in her neighbourhood, going to prison was a badge of honour. In short, while certainly not excused from the things they had done, they were all victims of a reality where women were used and mistreated much more than men.

Some of them had spent almost their entire lives in prison. One of them told us, «This is my home. If I leave for a while, I come back… It’s as if I went out on vacation and then came back».

Sad stories, heart-breaking ones, but in reality, we spent those two days having fun and becoming friends, so much so that when the moment came to say goodbye it was truly devastating.

My problem, however, was still with the setting. How could we make it clear that this was really a prison? I remembered a 1959 film titled Nella città l’inferno[41] by Renato Castellani, shot in the female section of a Roman prison with Anna Magnani and Giulietta Masina as protagonists. Perfect! While editing, I extrapolated the scenes that seemed like they were closer to the reality I had lived through with my group of prisoners, and so the documentary included three languages that confronted each other: the film’s, the prison guards’, and the prisoners’. Because it was in black and white, the film managed to give a poetic framework to a story that seemed true. The prison guards stumbled through boring and bureaucratic language. And the prisoners dazzled the screen with the raw, sincere truth of their life stories.

At the national launch, we had the extraordinary endorsement of Lina Wertmuller, who immediately “fell in love” with them. And I will never forget, amidst the thunderous and sincere applause of a large audience, how their eyes shined with a joy they had never known before.

References:

S. Anastasia and P. Gonnella, Patrie galere. Viaggio nell’Italia dietro le sbarre, Roma, Carocci, 2005;

Eid., Inchiesta sulle carceri italiane, Roma, Carocci, 2002;

A. Ashworth and L. Zedner, Preventive Justice, London, Oxford University Press, 2014;

E. Bacchin, “Our Botany Bay”. The Political Prisoners of the Risorgimento and the Sentence of Deportation, in «The Journal of Modern History», 95 (2), 2023, pp. 349-84;

Ead., La Siberia piemontese. La deportazione degli esuli indesiderati negli anni Cinquanta dell’Ottocento, in «Studi Storici», 64 (2), 2023, pp. 315-44;

Ead., Venezia 1831-32: Prigionieri politici e diritto di ribellione. Un affaire internazionale, in «Passato e Presente», 115, 2022, pp. 124-41;

Ead., Political Prisoners of the Italian Mezzogiorno. A Transnational Question of the Nineteenth Century, in «European History Quarterly», 50 (4), 2020, pp. 625-49;

A. Bernabò Silorata, Case penali, in «Digesto Italiano», Torino, UTET, vol. 6, II, 1891;

M. Boswort, C. Hoyle and L. Zedner, Changing Contours of Criminal Justice, London, Oxford University Press, 2016;

F. Carfora, Lavori forzati, in «Digesto Italiano», Torino, UTET, vol. 14, 1902-1905;

L. Cajani, Surveillance and Redemption. The Casa di Correzione of San Michele a Ripa in Rome, in Institutions of Confinement. Hospitals, Asylums, and Prisons in Western Europe and North America, 1500-1950, edited by N. Finzsch and R. Jütte, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 301-24;

J.E.E. Dalberg-Acton Historical Essays and Studies, edited by J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence, London, Macmillan, 1907;

C. De Vito, R. Futselaar and H. Grevers eds, Incarceration and Regime Change. European Prisons During and After the Second World War, Oxford-New York, Berghahn, 2016;

F. Di Pasquale, On the Edge of Penal Colonies. Castiadas (Sardinia) and the “Redemption” of the Land, in «International Review of Social History», 64 (3), 2019, pp. 427-44;

Ead., The “Other” at Home: Deportation and Transportation of Libyans to Italy During the Colonial Era (1911-1943), in «International Review of Social History», 63 (S26), 2018, pp. 211-31;

M. Di Sivo, Per via di giustizia. Sul processo penale a Roma tra XVI e XIX secolo, in Giustizia e criminalità nello Stato pontificio: ne delicta remaneant impunita, edited by M. Calzolari, M. Di Sivo and E. Grantaliano, Rome, Rivista Storica del Lazio, Archivio di Stato di Roma, 2002, pp. 13-35;

A. Foa, Andare per i luoghi di confino, Bologna, il Mulino, 2018;

M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison, New York, Pantheon Books, 1977;

E. Freedman, Their Sisters’ Keepers. Women’s Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1981;

P. Garofalo, E. Leake and D. Renga, Internal Exile in Fascist Italy. History and Representation of Confino, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2019;

M. Gibson, Prostitution and the State in Italy, 1860–1915, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1986;

Ead., Born to Crime: Cesare Lombroso and the Origins of Biological Criminology, Westport, CT, Praeger, 2002;

Ead., Italian Prisons in the Age of Positivism, 1861–1914, London, Bloomsbury, 2019;

P. Gonnella, Carceri. I confini della dignità, Milano, Jaca Book, 2020;

P. Gonnella (ed.), La riforma dell’ordinamento penitenziario, Torino, Giappichelli, 2019;

P. Gonnella, La tortura in Italia. Parole, luoghi e pratiche della violenza pubblica, Bologna, DeriveApprodi, 2013;

P. Gonnella and S. Marietti, Jailhouse Rock. 100 musicisti dietro le sbarre, Roma, Arcana, 2012;

A. Issaa, Vivo per questo, Milano, Chiarelettere, 2017;

Ead., Educazione Rap, Torino, ADD Editore, 2021;

A. Issaa and C. Clò, This is What I Live For:An Afro-Italian Hip-Hop Memoir, San Diego, San Diego State University Press, 2023;

L. Monticelli, La polizia del papa. Istituzioni di controllo sociale a Roma nella prima metà dell’Ottocento, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2012;

C. Lombroso, Criminal Man, translated and with a New Introduction by Mary Gibson and N. H. Rafter, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2006;

Id., Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman, translated and with a New Introduction by Mary Gibson and N. H. Rafter, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2004;

C. Lombroso and G. Ferrero, La donna delinquente. La prostituta e la donna normale, Roma, Editori L. Roux e C., 1893;

D. Maraini, Vita Mia. Giappone 1943. Memorie di una bambina italiana in un campo di prigionia, Milano, Rizzoli, 2023;

Ead., In nome di Ipazia. Riflessioni sul destino femminile, Milano, Solferino, 2023;

Ead., Ascoltiamo le voci di dolore che si levano dalle nostre carceri, in «Io Donna», 6 (2), 2001, 13 January, p. 9;

Ead., Il carcere è una pena dura, ma non rieduca i delinquenti, in «Io Donna», 5 (29), 2000, 15 July, p. 7;

Ead., In carcere: le umiliazioni e il tempo che non passa, in «Io Donna», 3 (45), 1998, 7 November, p. 5;

Ead., La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa, Milano, Rizzoli, 1990;

Ead., Memorie di una ladra, Milano, Bompiani, 1972;

Ead., Ricamano (e odiano) le detenute del carcere di Venezia, in «Paese Sera», 1969, 15 November;

Ead., Se si rifiutano di obbedire vengono spedite al manicomio, in «Paese Sera», 1969, 17 November;

Ead., A Rebibbia si sperimenta il metodo dell’autodisciplina, in «Paese Sera», 1969, 22 November;

Ead., A Trani non detenute ma cavie, in «Paese Sera», 1969, 27 November;

Ead., Parlano le donne, in «Paese Sera», 1969, 1 December;

Ead., Diciotto domande a una omicida, una prostituta e una tossicomane, in «Paese Sera», 1969, 4 December;

Ead., Autoritarismo e paternalismo: ecco la norma, in «Paese Sera», 1969, 7 December;

I. Poerio, A scuola di dissenso. Storie di resistenza al confino di polizia (1926–1943), Roma, Carocci, 2016;

C. Poesio, Il confino fascista. L’arma silenziosa del regime, Bari, Laterza, 2011;

L. Zedner, Security, London, Routledge Key Ideas in Criminology Series, 2009;

Ead., Criminal Justice, London, Oxford University Press Clarendon Law Series, 2004;

Ead., Women, Crime, and Custody in Victorian England, London, Oxford University Press, Oxford Historical Monographs, 1991;

L. Zedner and J. Morgan, Child Victims. Crime, Impact, and Criminal Justice, London, Oxford University Press, 1992.

Websites:

Antigone, È vietata la tortura. XIX Rapporto di Antigone sulle condizioni di detenzione, 2023;, https://www.rapportoantigone.it/diciannovesimo-rapporto-sulle-condizioni-di-detenzione/; [accessed on 7 July 2024];

CAT Cooperativa Sociale, Sede di Firenze, Sbarre Mic Check. La voce dell’inclusione attraverso il rap; accessed on 7 July 2024, https://www.coopcat.it/portfolio_page/sbarre-mic-check/;

D. Maraini, Giusta la pena, non la tortura. È ora di cambiare le nostre carceri, in «Corriere della sera», 23 July 2012, https://www.corriere.it/opinioni/12_luglio_23/maraini-giusta-pena-non-tortura_81762aa4-d49a-11e1-9251-6da620bfc4cf.shtml [accessed on 7 July 2024];

Treccani, Ti leggo nelle carceri minorili, https://www.treccani.it/eventi/sala-igea/Amnesty.html [accessed on 7 July 2024].

Filmography:

R. Castellani, Director, Nella città l’inferno, performances by Anna Magnani and Giulietta Masina, Riama Film, 1959;

C. Di Prima, Director, Teresa la ladra, performance by Monica Vitti, screenplay by Dacia Maraini, Agenore Incrocci, and Furio Scarpelli, Euro International Film, 1973;

M. G. Laurenzi, Director, Donne di un altro mondo, Consiglio di Parità, Regione Campania, Ministero della Giustizia, 2005.

  1. The five interviewees were contacted via e-mail and on Zoom between June and October 2023. The interviews with Patrizio Gonnella, Amir Issaa, Dacia Maraini, and Maria Giustina Laurenzi were originally held in Italian, and then translated into English by Isabella Corletto. The texts were revised and approved by the interviewees. ↑
  2. Throughout her career, Maraini has been at the forefront of many causes in defence of civil rights, especially regarding female imprisonment, which she actively investigated in an Inchiesta sulle carceri femminili, published in instalments in the Italian afternoon newspaper «Paese Sera»: see D. Maraini, Ricamano (e odiano) le detenute del carcere di Venezia, in «Paese Sera», 1969, 15 November; Ead., Se si rifiutano di obbedire vengono spedite al manicomio, in «Paese Sera», 1969, 17 November; Ead., A Rebibbia si sperimenta il metodo dell’autodisciplina, in «Paese Sera», 1969, 22 November; Ead., A Trani non detenute ma cavie, in «Paese Sera», 1969, 27 November; Ead., Parlano le donne, in «Paese Sera», 1969, 1 December; Ead., Diciotto domande a una omicida, una prostituta e una tossicomane, in «Paese Sera», 1969, 4 December; Ead., Autoritarismo e paternalismo: ecco la norma, in «Paese Sera», 1969, 7 December. Some of these contributions have been collected in D. Maraini, Vita Mia. Giappone 1943. Memorie di una bambina italiana in un campo di prigionia, Milan, Rizzoli, 2023; Ead., In nome di Ipazia. Riflessioni sul destino femminile, Milano, Solferino, 2023. Maraini’s positions on female imprisonment have been published regularly in the daily «Corriere della Sera» (D. Maraini, Giusta la pena, non la tortura. È ora di cambiare le nostre carceri, in «Corriere della sera», 23 July 2012, https://www.corriere.it/opinioni/12_luglio_23/maraini-giusta-pena-non-tortura_81762aa4-d49a-11e1-9251-6da620bfc4cf.shtml), and in its magazine «Io Donna» (see at least D. Maraini, Ascoltiamo le voci di dolore che si levano dalle nostre carceri, in «Io Donna», 6 (2), 2001, 13 January, p. 9; Ead., Il carcere è una pena dura, ma non rieduca i delinquenti, in «Io Donna», 5, (29), 2000, 15 July, p. 7; Ead., In carcere: le umiliazioni e il tempo che non passa, in «Io Donna», 3 (45), 1998, 7 November, p. 5.). ↑
  3. See M. Gibson, Prostitution and the State in Italy, 1860–1915, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1986. ↑
  4. See M. Gibson, Born to Crime: Cesare Lombroso and the Origins of Biological Criminology, Westport, CT, Praeger, 2002. ↑
  5. See C. Lombroso, Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman, translated and with a New Introduction by Mary Gibson and N. H. Rafter, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2004. ↑
  6. See C. Lombroso, Criminal Man, translated and with a New Introduction by Mary Gibson and N. H. Rafter, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2006. ↑
  7. See M. Gibson, Italian Prisons in the Age of Positivism, 1861–1914, London, Bloomsbury, 2019. ↑
  8.  In the history of Italian carceral institutions, the bagni penali, literally, ‘penal baths’ were a type of penal colonies where convicts were subject to a forced labour regime and cruel corporal punishments. The bagni, widespread especially in the Tuscan isles, were outlawed with the promulgation of the Zanardelli reform of criminal law and penal institutions of 1891. See F. Carfora, Lavori forzati, in «Digesto Italiano», Torino, Unione tipografico editrice, vol. 14, 1902-1905; A. Bernabò Silorata, Case penali, in «Digesto Italiano», Torino, Unione tipografico editrice, vol. 6, parte II, 1891. ↑
  9. See C. Lombroso, Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman, translated and with a New Introduction by Mary Gibson and N. H. Rafter, cited. ↑
  10. See M. Gibson, Born to Crime: Cesare Lombroso and the Origins of Biological Criminology, cited. ↑
  11. See C. Lombroso, Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman, translated and with a New Introduction by Mary Gibson and N. H. Rafter, cited. ↑
  12. See E. Freedman, Their Sisters’ Keepers. Women’s Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1981. ↑
  13. See L. Zedner, Women, Crime, and Custody in Victorian England, London, Oxford University Press, Oxford Historical Monographs, 1991; L. Zedner and J. Morgan, Child Victims. Crime, Impact, and Criminal Justice, London, Oxford University Press, 1992; L. Zedner, Criminal Justice, London, Oxford University Press Clarendon Law Series, 2004; Ead., Security, London, Routledge Key Ideas in Criminology Series, 2009. ↑
  14. M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison, New York, Pantheon Books, 1977 [First edition in French, Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la prison, Paris, Gallimard, 1975]. ↑
  15. Camilla Ravera (1889-1988) was a prominent Italian politician and leading figure in the Italian Communist Party. She joined the Italian Socialist Party in 1918, worked with Antonio Gramsci, and collaborated with the newspaper «L’Ordine Nuovo». She played a key role in the founding of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1921 and organised clandestine activities against the Fascist government when Gramsci was incarcerated. In 1930, she was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in jail. She spent the first five years in jail in Perugia and, starting in 1943, she was exiled and sent to ‘confino’ to Montalbano Jonico, San Giorgio Lucano, Ponza, and Ventotene. She was expelled from the Communist Party in 1939 and readmitted in 1945, becoming a crucial figure in the history of the PCI until her death. ↑
  16. See Antigone, È vietata la tortura. XIX Rapporto di Antigone sulle condizioni di detenzione, 2023; https://www.rapportoantigone.it/diciannovesimo-rapporto-sulle-condizioni-di-detenzione/. ↑
  17. See M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison, cited. ↑
  18. See M. Di Sivo, Per via di giustizia. Sul processo penale a Roma tra XVI e XIX secolo, in Giustizia e criminalità nello Stato pontificio: ne delicta remaneant impunita, edited by M. Calzolari, M. Di Sivo and E. Grantaliano, Rome, Rivista Storica del Lazio, Archivio di Stato di Roma, 2002, pp. 13-35. ↑
  19. See L. Cajani, Surveillance and Redemption. The Casa di Correzione of San Michele a Ripa in Rome, in Institutions of Confinement. Hospitals, Asylums, and Prisons in Western Europe and North America, 1500-1950, edited by N. Finzsch and R. Jütte, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 301-24. ↑
  20. C. De Vito, R. Futselaar and H. Grevers eds, Incarceration and Regime Change. European Prisons During and After the Second World War, Oxford-New York, Berghahn, 2016. ↑
  21. See L. Monticelli, La polizia del papa. Istituzioni di controllo sociale a Roma nella prima metà dell’Ottocento, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2012. ↑
  22. See F. Di Pasquale, The “Other” at Home: Deportation and Transportation of Libyans to Italy During the Colonial Era (1911-1943), in «International Review of Social History», 63 (S26), 2018, pp. 211-31; Ead., On the Edge of Penal Colonies. Castiadas (Sardinia) and the “Redemption” of the Land, in «International Review of Social History», 64 (3), 2019, pp. 427-44. ↑
  23. See E. Bacchin, Political Prisoners of the Italian Mezzogiorno. A Transnational Question of the Nineteenth Century, in «European History Quarterly», 50 (4), 2020, pp. 625-49; Ead., Venezia 1831-32: Prigionieri politici e diritto di ribellione. Un affaire internazionale, in «Passato e Presente», 115, 2022, pp. 124-41; Ead., “Our Botany Bay”. The Political Prisoners of the Risorgimento and the Sentence of Deportation, in «The Journal of Modern History», 95 (2), 2023, pp. 349-84; Ead., La Siberia piemontese. La deportazione degli esuli indesiderati negli anni Cinquanta dell’Ottocento, in «Studi Storici», 64 (2), 2023, pp. 315-44. ↑
  24. See I. Poerio, A scuola di dissenso. Storie di resistenza al confino di polizia (1926–1943), Roma, Carocci, 2016. ↑
  25. See S. C. Soper, Southern Italian prisoners on the stage of international politics, in « Journal of Modern Italian Studies», 25 (2), 2020, pp. 95-117. ↑
  26. See C. Poesio, Il confino fascista. L’arma silenziosa del regime, Bari, Laterza, 2011; I. Poerio, A scuola di dissenso. Storie di resistenza al confino di polizia (1926–1943), cited.; A. Foa, Andare per i luoghi di confino, Bologna, il Mulino, 2018; P. Garofalo, E. Leake and D. Renga, Internal Exile in Fascist Italy. History and Representation of Confino, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2019. ↑
  27. See C. De Vito, R. Futselaar and H. Grevers eds, Incarceration and Regime Change. European Prisons During and After the Second World War, cited. ↑
  28. See P. Gonnella and S. Marietti, Jailhouse Rock. 100 musicisti dietro le sbarre, Roma, Arcana, 2012. ↑
  29. Gonnella also boasts a remarkable scientific and educational production. See at least P. Gonnella, La tortura in Italia. Parole, luoghi e pratiche della violenza pubblica, Bologna, DeriveApprodi, 2013; Id. (ed.), La riforma dell’ordinamento penitenziario, Torino, Giappichelli, 2019; Id., Carceri. I confini della dignità, Milano, Jaca Book, 2020; S. Anastasia and P. Gonnella, Inchiesta sulle carceri italiane, Roma, Carocci, 2002; Eid., Patrie galere. Viaggio nell’Italia dietro le sbarre, Roma, Carocci, 2005. ↑
  30. See A. Issaa, Vivo per questo, Milano, Chiarelettere, 2017. ↑
  31. See A. Issaa, Vivo per questo, cited. ↑
  32. See A. Issaa and C. Clò, This is What I Live For. An Afro-Italian Hip-Hop Memoir, San Diego, San Diego State University Press, 2023. In June 2024, the book was awarded the prestigious Premio Internazionale Flaiano d’Italianistica Luca Attanasio. ↑
  33. See A. Issaa, Educazione Rap, Torino, ADD Editore, 2021. ↑
  34. See A. Issaa, Vivo per questo, cited. ↑
  35. See D. Maraini, Vita Mia. Giappone 1943. Memorie di una bambina italiana in un campo di prigionia, Milano, Rizzoli, 2023. ↑
  36. Maraini refers to Lord Acton’s 1877 letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton about how historians’ judgement should regard abuses of power by past rulers, especially by the popes. Acton’s actual words were ‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. The letter is published in J.E.E. Dalberg-Acton, Historical Essays and Studies, edited by J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence, London, Macmillan, 1907. ↑
  37. See D. Maraini, Memorie di una ladra, Milano, Bompiani, 1972. ↑
  38. See C. Di Prima Director, Teresa la ladra, performance by Monica Vitti, screenplay by Dacia Maraini, Agenore Incrocci, and Furio Scarpelli, Euro International Film, 1973. ↑
  39. See D. Maraini, La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa, Milano, Rizzoli, 1990. ↑
  40. See M. G. Laurenzi Director, Donne di un altro mondo, Consiglio di Parità, Regione Campania, Ministero della Giustizia, 2005. ↑
  41. See R. Castellani Director, Nella città l’inferno, performances by Anna Magnani and Giulietta Masina, Riama Film, 1959. ↑

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