Prison, 50 years of a far-sighted code only partly implemented

They were years of blind violence, but also of strong ideals. Years of terror, as of hope. And in that wide-ranging season of reforms, the citizen, including the recluse, returned to the centre with his dignity. Dignity recalled right from the first article of the prison regulations, approved on 26 July fifty years ago. Dignity that is more than the prohibition of 'degrading' treatment, to use the vocabulary of the regulations; it is the restitution of fundamental rights. And 'dignity' in prisons is what the President of the Republic has returned to evoke, urging 'urgent and far-sighted interventions'.

A long view is precisely what makes the half-century-old reform of the prison code still so modern and in many respects unimplemented. Even in the terrible years of lead, it was understood that the answer could not only be the custody of offenders, but a complete taking into account of the person, to return him or her to the society of the free, no longer disposed to crime. This is what the Constitution calls for and what convenience suggests. Because prison costs a lot (3.4 billion a year) and only with the collapse of recidivism can the need for security be met. But in order for the path to succeed, it is necessary to give back to the complex prison system its function as a bridge between inside and outside, collected by the legal system; as an institution deputed not only to contain, but to accompany each prisoner through a tailor-made path. A path to which several actors are called.

There is already everything in the 91 articles of the '75 code (signed by Leone, Moro, Reale and Colombo). There is the duty to 'call the detainee by name', who is not a number, who wears his own clothes and not anonymous uniforms, as in certain American institutes. There is the right to live in environments with adequate levels of hygiene, ventilation, and food: those material conditions assessed by judges when compensating for 'inhuman and degrading treatment', according to the dictates of the European Court of Human Rights, which in 2013 condemned Italy for levels of overcrowding close to the current one. And this is why, for example, the Florence Surveillance Court ordered to move those from Sollicciano who complain of cells with infiltrations, cracked plaster and bedbugs. According to the legal system, in fact, the detainee is the holder of rights that do not lapse with conviction (with exceptions), including the right to complain. But that system, which fifty years ago did not fail to take charge of what comes before the crime and then the crucial phase of release - providing for the "participation of the outside community in the re-educative action" (Art. 17) - remains partly on paper also because of its far-sighted vision. Difficult to implement in a system with little communication between different competences, which facilitates the dystopias of which Pietro Buffa (Narrati e distopie penitenziarie, ed Intra), for years a prison executive, writes. A system that only with extreme slowness manages to align itself with the normative indications. So if after decades only half of the cells have showers inside, it is not surprising that it took a year and a half after the Constitutional Court ruling and the orders of several Courts to open a breach in the right to affectivity. With the current overcrowding - 62,000 inmates for 51,000 places (including 4,500 unfit) and an increasing trend of admissions - the indication of a 'not high number' of inmates set by the law, which emphasises the need for premises 'for communal life', is a dead letter.

A conception of space, therefore, that the rules would like not only of custody but of "sociality, affectivity, programming", as recalled by Mattarella. Words that take on an even greater value, when for months we have been waiting for the plan of the extraordinary commissioner of penitentiary construction, Marco Doglio, with the announced prefabs for 7,000 new beds, bogged down between the Mef's concert and political fetters. In the meantime, another scorching summer has begun with the 'unacceptable drama of suicides' (emblematic are the 12 stories told by Alessandro Trocino in Morire di pena, Laterza) questioning everything that the prison lacks. First of all, an adequate psychological support: apart from the new investments claimed by Minister Nordio (3 million per year), the limits of the prison health system are evident, with competences spread between Regions and Asl and significant variations (also on the remuneration for specialists, 96 euro gross in Trento, 24 in Syracuse). But what answers can be given if faced with 62,000 inmates there are 1,040 educators (organic plant almost full, 1,099)? Or the people on the waiting list (664 at the end of 2024) to enter a Residence for the Execution of Surveillance Measures (which replaced the judicial asylums) are more than those admitted (630), not to mention the very high percentage of psychiatric disorders? So generous operators, starting with the prison police, take on tasks that would be the responsibility of other professions. In the 1970s, mental illness was included in a broad welfare system, but if today this is one of the emergencies in the cells, it is also because that is where those who have been excluded from other health and social networks, which should prevent crime, end up. If 50 years ago welfare entered the prison, today it is the prison that offers social support to those who have nothing outside. A place of the 'hopeless', according to the lapidary expression of the Head of State. A short-circuit, whereby the "crime becomes the answer to what did not work before and then the prison is asked to perform the miracle of re-socialisation", summarised Giacinto Siciliano, Dap executive, in a conference at Lumsa: an analysis that also photographs the transformation of the prison population, increasingly an expression of marginality unlike the 1970s. And if it is true that penitentiary reforms, repeated the historical director of San Vittore Luigi Pagano, "are only carried out with the consent of public opinion", it seems increasingly difficult even to administratively translate what was already envisaged by the regulations 50 years ago. Far-sighted and modern, for their flexibility in translating high principles into a changing reality. If you like.