Investing in human resources, skills and community spaces for the rehabilitation of young prisoners

The re-education of young inmates (which in 2024, according to data from the Antigone association, exceeded 500 and confirmed the overcrowding alert even in penal institutions for minors) passes through the cooperation of educated and aware adults, the value of the community dimension and training and professional paths that help them regain possession of their future. This was the leitmotif shared by the speakers at the round table held on Tuesday 1 July at Palazzo Lombardia in Milan, Oltre le sbarre, la vera libertà, organised by the Asilo Mariuccia Milan Foundation and the Region.

'Adults need to go to the school of relationships'. Clear and concise was the invitation of Don Gino Rigoldi, chaplain of the Beccaria juvenile detention centre for over fifty years, who, reaffirming the value of the human approach in accompanying young people towards a new life, put two ambitious proposals on the table: to think of a new community model and to extend Article 21 to school education. "The communities, today, have fewer and fewer places and are destined to have fewer and fewer because, when the young people come of age, if they do not find a family ready to welcome them, they tend to stay there,' explained Don Rigoldi.
'It would be necessary, therefore, to develop also in Italy what in France or Spain is the model of the maisons des jeunes, communities of 20 or 30 young people of different affiliations and origins, cheerful, smiling and animated by culture'. As for the second suggestion, widening the rule and extending it to schooling could become an important boost to reintegration into society. "Ad hoc day centres could be created: during the day they go out to do lessons, just as those who work do, and once they have finished, they return to prison," he added. This would make them, in some way, become autonomous before release and would integrate them into society".

A vision to which Don Claudio Burgio, chaplain in charge at the Beccaria Institute, also seems to align himself. Who, in returning to the role of the host communities, insisted on the need to renew their model, which is often anachronistic.
"We are dealing with an interrupted generation, which is not able to decline into a life project," he concluded, "We need to update the methods, we cannot use those of thirty years ago. And above all open up to confrontation'. Leveraging, for example, music. 'To try to understand these young people and stem the educational emergency, it may be useful to start from the lyrics of the trap and rap songs they listen to so much. The violence of the lyrics is not justifiable, but it is of little use to censor them, because that does not undo the logic that leads them to take deviant paths'.
The figure of the adult returns, here too, in all its necessity. Especially in the shoes of educators, who are becoming fewer and fewer. Not least because of meagre and unfair economic recognition, notwithstanding the difficulties of the profession. "What is needed are not only prepared people but resilient ones, capable of humanity and able to grow with the children, establishing a relationship that is not only normative". A profile that, according to Don Burgio, can also be found in many prisoners on semi-release, to whom the doors of the prison education system should be opened. Even without an academic qualification and enhancing their personal and human experience.

Investing in the scope for action and the skills of those working in contact with juvenile detainees certainly remains one of the priorities with which the institutions must interface. For instance, thinking about 'a European plan of resources to be used to train staff and strengthen the community facility', as suggested by Giulio Gallera, chairman of the special commission Pnrr of the Lombardy Region. Yet, preventive education should not be underestimated. 'Re-education is complex if, upstream, there is no education, but it is a path that can lead not only to social integration and a potential reduction of recidivism, but also to improving the relationship with the family,' concluded Antonino La Lumia, president of the Milan Bar Association. 'Intervening before the crime is fundamental, especially in the era of virtual offences, which are often not perceived in all their seriousness'.
A road to be taken, according to Fabio Roia, president of the Court of Milan, 'sensitising parents to positive control', not delegating to the school burdens that by nature are not its responsibility and avoiding entering a vicious circle of delegation 'that risks, inevitably, to turn into deresponsibility'.