41-bis, yes to the meeting of the boss with a woman if a relationship has arisen

It cannot be forbidden, in the name of the right to affectivity, for the mafia boss prisoner on 41-bis to have a visual interview with a woman with whom, after an exchange of correspondence, which lasted about 17 years, a affectionate relationship was established. And this in spite of the fact that the prison regulations, with regard to the special differentiated regime,  expressly prohibit (paragraph 2, Article 41-bis) the conversations of the detainee subjected to the so-called hard prison, with persons other than family members, except in exceptional cases identified from time to time by the director of the penal institution.

The Cassazione has thus rejected the appeal by the Ministry of Justice against the order in which the Surveillance Court had upheld the complaint lodged by a mafia boss - restricted to 41-bis for over 25 years and in prison since 1993 - to cancel the warden's rejection of an in-person interview with a woman a 'pen pal' since 2008: an epistolary relationship that had turned into a sentimental liaison.

For the Supreme Court, in fact, the interview requested by the detainee, like meetings with family members, although exceptional, falls within the subjective rights of the detainee, specifically to affectivity. For the judges of legitimacy, therefore, the refusal had to be motivated after balancing 'the needs of affectivity of the subject confined and those of public safety, which, where considered prevalent, do not allow this right to be satisfied'.

In the case examined, the judges had verified that the woman was distant from organised crime circles and excluded that the only precedent against her, as well as her activism in favour of prisoners - since she also kept correspondence with another boss imprisoned at 41-bis - were such as to represent a danger to security, as also affirmed by the district anti-mafia directorate and as also evidenced by the study of the correspondence between the two, which lasted for years.

In the Court of Cassation's opinion, the Supervisory Court thus correctly motivated the concrete prejudice suffered by the detainee because of the warden's no to the meeting. For the detainee, this is a decisive step forward, after having made the headlines for another rejection by the prison in which he was confined, of the reading of Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose. In the wake of the uproar over the affair, the prison management had clarified that the ban was motivated not by the dangerousness of the book due to its content, but by the hardcover binding.