ROMA – There will be a day of studies, scheduled for Friday 17 May from 9am to 5pm in the Padua prison on the topic of affectivity in prison, sanctioned by a recent ruling of the Constitutional Court which declared the constitutional illegitimacy of the art. 18 ofPenitentiary system in the part in which it provides that the detained person may be admitted to interviews with his or her spouse or cohabitant, under the visual supervision of the custodial staff”. The detained editors of. participate in the work with their testimonies Restricted Horizons , who will also talk to their families. The work will be coordinated by Adolfo Ceretti, criminologist from the University of Milan-Bicocca, and scientific coordinator of the Office for Criminal Mediation of Milan. The director of the prison, Claudio Mazzeo, will open the proceedings. The program of Study Day was edited by Ornella Favero with the editorial staff of Restricted Horizons.
The desertification of affections. “Affective desertification”: this is “the prison landscape” that the Constitutional Court describes in sentence 10/2024, which, by making intimate conversations possible, is destined to revolutionize prison life by bringing vegetation, water and love back to that desert. Restricted Horizons – Association also made up of prisoners that informs about what happens in Italian prisons and courtrooms. – came out in 1998, in its Zero issue, tackling without shyness the theme of affections and sex denied in prison. Today, more than twenty-five years later, for the first time we glimpse the possibility of a true, profound, radical change. The ruling of the Constitutional Court is the guiding light on a journey that can truly transform prisons into more humane places, starting from those spaces that must finally be guaranteed to detained people to meet loved ones without visual checks.
Journey inside a sentence. The first stage is with the magistrate and the constitutionalist: for love in prison you need “a space as similar as possible to life on the outside”. Fabio Gianfilippi is the supervisory magistrate of Terni who raised the question of constitutionality on article 18 of the Penitentiary Regulations, which imposes visual control in the conversations of detained people with their loved ones, effectively preventing the exercise of the right to cultivate an emotional and sexual relationship with one’s partner: “The Court does not dictate the times, but it certainly says – in my opinion very clearly – that there is no need to wait for the legislator. He will intervene if and when he deems it necessary, but in the meantime we need to organize ourselves, even if the times will inevitably be a little different from institute to institute”.
Sex and prison, an incandescent and removed theme. Andrea Pugiotto, a constitutionalist who has been ensuring that the Constitution does not stop at the threshold of prison, wrote for years: “The pairing of affection and prison grips a problem around which it is useless to circumnavigate: the possibility of maintaining behind bars a love relationship that does not is amputated of its sexual dimension. A burning problem, therefore always removed despite the repeated request of prisoners to have meetings in prison, in conditions of intimacy, with people with whom they maintain a loving relationship. It’s a legitimate desire. Is it also a right?”. Yes, today it is also a right, “it is now a question of being vigilant against the risk of delaying maneuvers which – we can bet – will not be lacking”. Andrea Pugiotto is professor of Constitutional Law, at the University of Ferrara, drafter and first signatory of the appeal – signed by over one hundred academics, guarantors of prisoners, presidents and members of the Union of Penal Chambers (UCPI), representatives of the Volunteer and Third Sector – in support of the question of constitutionality promoted by the Supervisory Magistrate of Terni.
Second stage, the encounter with blocked emotions. Con kids who had to freeze their emotions. If you leave home while you are still a child, if you leave your country and your parents don’t stop you because they know that there is no future in staying, affection, love, memories, you have to repress them so as not to feel too bad. And instead, Chiara Gregori, a sexologist capable of speaking delicately about sex and love, tells the children of the juvenile detention center, emotions “… learn to recognize them, to respect them, therefore to modulate them, before taking action; it is important so that you can feel good, but also so that those who are with you feel good.” He also talks to the kids “of the importance of pleasure in our lives and sexuality, but also the importance of kindness and care for the other person and finally the tendency we have to do things to please other people rather than ourselves. These are three aspects that, in my opinion, should always be measured and evaluated in human relationships”. Chiara Gregori, she is a gynecologist and sexologist, she follows a project with a class of foreign minors from the Beccaria juvenile penal institute, as part of a program financed by the University of Milan. It just came out, for editions Yellow Beak“Please. Small guide for conscious sexuality”.
Third stage, prisoners and “frozen” love.
The adult prison that makes you become “love illiterate”. Reducing the damage caused by prison, perhaps this is what the Constitutional Court’s ruling will help. Which seems like little, and yet it is an enormity, because it allows detained people to rediscover their humanity, the beauty of a hug, the pleasure of a kiss that is not stolen. Francesca Melandri, screenwriter, writer and documentary maker is also the author of Higher than the seawhere he recounts the dark years of terrorism from a different perspective, that of the relatives of the guilty, victims themselves but condemned to not be worthy of compassion.
Fourth stage, the role of the penitentiary police. But also that of civil operators. In short, from a hostile look to a welcoming look? Roberto Cornelli, criminologist, writes: “Analysing the point of view of Penitentiary Police operators is relevant (…) to allow a public discussion on the police, in order to strengthen the democratic presuppositions of their legitimacy. The use of police force is always problematic in a democratic society, even when it is legitimate: is it possible that the shooting range and technical training cannot be accompanied by other in-depth subjects? Is it possible that training is managed in such a self-referential way that it does not allow spaces for dialogue with the external society?”. Roberto Cornelli he is full professor of Criminology at the University of Milan, where he also teaches Restorative Justice. He is the author of “The police force. A criminological study of violence”; he has dedicated various research to the Penitentiary Police, including the “First investigation into the Lombardy staff of the Penitentiary Police” and the study on “The penitentiary police faced with critical events”.
The love “entrusted” to the directors? The ruling of the Constitutional Court needs directors who know how to challenge the slowness, which sometimes becomes immobility, of the institutions. The Court therefore invites everyone to give their contribution and, we add, not to do as with the Implementation Regulation of the Penitentiary Regulation which from 2000 to today has still not been fully applied: “It is also appropriate to valorise here the contribution that an orderly implementation of today’s decision can be achieved – at least pending the intervention of the legislator – by the administration of justice, in all its branches, central and peripheral, not excluding the directors of the individual institutes”.
Love needs experience. Cosima Buccoliero, director of the Monza prison, says this about the emotional bonds of detained people: “Love needs experience and for these couples the impossibility of experience nullifies even the most intense of feelings. The relationship is lived by letter, in a constant projection towards another time or another place, and through the six conversations which can become even fewer if there are mothers or fathers, children, sisters or brothers to meet and share them with. And then it is a relationship always lived under the eye of surveillance.”
Fifth stage, the deaths in prison. When love and pain intertwine in prison. The love we are talking about is that of many mothers, whose children are in prison and should not be there: “My son – Stefania says – had had a psychiatric evaluation, in which it was clearly written that he was unfit for prison, and therefore had to follow a community path. (…) And in fact he was waiting to be transferred to a REMS. Then there were some disastrous episodes, for example a few days earlier a boy from a cell next door with whom Giacomo had become friends had taken his life. This basically triggered him, although we don’t know how voluntary his death was, in the sense that he was trying to soothe his devastating pain in any way.” Preventing these deaths is not easy, but more must be done: let’s at least start by listening to the stories of those mothers who have “lost” a child in prison. Stefania, mother of Giacomo, who lost her life in prison at the age of 22.
Sixth stage, new hopes. The love and suffering of family members. How will the children, partners and parents of those detained look at the sentence? It is with them first of all that we need to open a dialogue, because the risk is that illusions, mistrust and even the feeling of being discriminated or excluded are created, since the sentence limits the possibility of conversations reserved for the spouse, the party of civil union or permanently cohabiting person. In this regard Massimo Cirri should be mentioned, psychologist and journalist, and has been involved in public mental health services for twenty-five years. Since 1997 he has been the author and voice of Caterpillaron Radio2 and is the author, among other things, with Chiara D’Ambros, of What you need, a delicate, ironic and profound book, which confirms the importance of the right to health enshrined in the Constitution. And the duty to protect it.
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– 2024-04-11 18:14:14
