Translator: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Nicoletta Pedrana
Good morning.
These 18 minutes to tell you about a state without prisons is really not enough.
I feel somewhat imprisoned in time,
because it is a topic that would require careful reflection,
thus needing a very long time to be properly discussed.
Anyway, I believe we should start by trying to give a sense, a meaning
to this word prison, to pinpoint what we mean by it.
So, what is a prison?
Because if we want to consider the prospect
of a community without prisons,
we first need to have a clear idea of what a prison is.
The word itself, derived from Latin, conveys the idea of bars.
So prisons, first of all, are characterized by bars.
In Italy, prisoners are confined in cells
that on average measure 12 square meters, if not less,
and not just one inmate, but two or more in those very 12 square meters.
In times of crisis, that is of overcrowding,
cells may contain as many as six, seven, eight people
in twelve square meters, or even less than twelve square meters.
And in those same cells you also find bunk beds
and anything the convicts may need,
including some kind of cubbyhole with a toilet or squat latrine
and a wash-basin, which is also used to cook food.
And normally, or at least as a general rule,
and with very few exceptions, inmates spend 22 hours a day in there.
Apart from two hours of yard time,
for all the remaining time they are locked in their cells
with another three, four, five, or six people.
Also, inmates are allowed to meet their families
only for a total of six hours per month.
This is the Italian prison system.
Cages, people locked up,
for a given period of time, in the conditions I mentioned.
If this is what prisons are like, well, there are conditions
which a person can suffer a restriction of personal freedom
in a completely different way.
Now perhaps there aren’t many left,
but when I went to middle and high school -
luckily, I never went to one -
there were boarding schools
and the boarders could only move within the school premises.
Then maybe they returned home on Saturdays and Sundays,
but during the week,
they too enjoyed limited freedom of movement
outside the structure.
Boarding schools are not prisons, of course.
When I talk about and try to picture a state without prisons,
I am not ruling out the possibility of detaining dangerous people -
only and exclusively if those people are really and positevely dangerous -
in an enclosed place.
But this is no longer a prison,
as their situation does not correspond
to the one where people suffer
the kind of limitations I told you about earlier.
It is not a prison when people can, for example,
freely move within a facility, leave their cells -
leave their rooms, actually, because they are no longer cells -
since they’re able to walk around and so on.
Tipically, convicts do not work.
I believe that roughly 87 percent of prisoners in Italy do not work:
as a matter of fact, they spend the vast majority of their day
locked in their cells, 22 hours a day.
What’s the point of prisons?
What collective purpose are prisons supposed to serve?
I believe that the first immediate, direct connection
is with personal security.
Prisons are built to enforce the security of those who live outside.
And why do you think this is the case?
It is not because those who have caused harm to others,
who have committed an offence, a crime,
should stay there for all their lives.
I mean, it would be crazy to think
that those who have committed a crime, a theft for example,
should spend all their lives in prison.
This could even be considered criminogenic,
because if all the people who committed a crime
were to spend their lives in prison,
then there would be no difference
and stealing would be on a par with murder.
You usually stay in prison for a limited time.
Unfortunately, in Italy, life sentences are still pronounced;
but excluding life sentences, you stay there for a limited time.
During that time security is guaranteed,
because that single person
is prevented from interacting with all other people;
but this applies for a limited amount of time.
What does security depend on?
It is said to depend on the prison's deterrent effect
on the prisoner
and all the others who see
that if you commit a crime, you are sent to jail.
Well, I believe this is a totally misplaced belief.
As matter of fact, prisons do not act as a deterrent
and do not therefore prevent deviant behaviour,
which may be harmful to others.
Why am I saying this?
Because there are figures to prove it:
69 percent of people leaving prison today will commit new offences.
It means that the tool is not working,
that it does not contribute to increasing security.
Think of it, there are different tools
that instead offer significantly more security.
But let's leave it for the moment, maybe we'll get back to it,
because I have a stopwatch here, you don't see it,
and there’s 10 minutes and 39... 38... 37... 36 seconds to go.
We’ll see if we can get there. Now, let’s get back to us.
69 percent of those who leave prison will commit new crimes,
which means that, obviously, prison does not have any deterrent effect
even on the people who have been there.
Let alone on others, who have never experienced
this terrible deprivation of personal freedom.
So, I think we should ask ourselves: is it consistent with our Constitution?
Is what I just told you about jails
consistent with Article 27 of the Italian Constitution,
which states that
"punishments shall aim at re-educating the convicted
and cannot consist in inhuman treatment"?
I beg you to try and picture it.
Let us all, individually, imagine
we’ve been convicted - rightly or unjustly, it doesn't matter -
let’s try to imagine what it would feel like
if we were put in that condition, even not for long, let’s say six months.
Let us all try, obviously simulating our feelings,
to imagine having spent six months,
together with other four, five, six people
in 12 square meters, with a cubbyhole on the side,
and having been able to meet or see all our relatives
for only six hours a month altogether.
Would we leave reconciled with the rest of society,
or wouldn’t we rather want to get back at them?
Is prison a place of reconciliation
or is it a place
where this desire for revenge is cultivated,
this sensation of having been wronged
and wanting to retaliate on others?
And, given this premise, are there any alternatives?
Something different exists.
There are countries, for example Norway,
where there are prisons
that according to our standards, would not even be considered as such,
since they are apartments,
which people can enter and leave,
having only a perimeter boundary to respect
like kids studying at a boarding school.
There are such places.
And whoever is put in such conditions,
well, they won’t spend the day lying on a bed.
Oh no, they’ll either study or work,
carrying out an activity which is aimed at their reintegration.
I believe that the biggest problem concerning those who are in prison
is precisely the one related to their ability to take responsibility
and be accountable to others, which means interacting with others,
respecting the rules we have set for ourselves,
each contributing to the best of his or her capacity,
so as to live together in the most dignified way possible.
But do you honestly think that such a need,
the acquisition of responsibility,
can be satisfied
through a regime
that prevents work and makes it hard to study?
And there are other solutions as well.
Apart from these facilities, like the ones I told you about in Norway,
there are also different systems and approaches
that in Italy are totally unknown, God only knows why.
One of these is restorative justice,
and we do not even know what the word means,
despite the fact that in Europe not only they've been talking about it,
but practicing it for sixty years.
If I remember correctly, it was back in 1964
the beginning of this experimentation, which would later become legislation.
In Belgium, Germany, Austria -
and not only in Europe, but more or less all over the world:
in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.
How does it work?
First, the victims are taken into account.
You see, our system completely disregards the victim,
as if the victim did not exist.
Indeed, in order to be awarded damages,
the victim must hire a lawyer, go to court, participate;
unless they take the initiative,
victims, I believe, are to some extent
damaged by the system.
Think about what happens to a girl who has been raped,
who has to report the fact, providing down to the smallest detail,
to the Carabinieri or the police,
and then is summoned by the Public Prosecutor
and must relive once again the pain she’s been through.
Then she would go in front of a judge,
be cross-examined by her attacker’s counselor,
who will do everything she can to discredit her.
This is what our system reserves for the victim,
and it reserves something far less dramatic,
yet potentially annoying, for the victims of a burglary,
who must go to report the fact, then go to court,
because they summon you to confirm it.
Provided they have found the perpetrator, which, to be honest, seldom happens.
Now, with the restorative justice system,
the victim assumes a central role,
because the goal of this method
is to offer the victim, as far as possible, some form of reparation,
while at the same time
creating in the offenders an awareness of the harm they caused.
It is a process.
It is a process through which the victim and the criminal
get to meet in such a way
that the victim can recover
a sense of dignity,
which was shattered by the crime;
and the other, without being made to feel guilt-ridden,
may realize the extent of the harm inflicted
and, having gained this awareness, may avoid re-offending in the future.
Here, as I said, this is unknown to us,
despite the fact
that a framework decision of the European Union
has substantially made the introduction of the restorative justice system
mandatory in all EU member states.
We are very far from conceiving a possibility like this.
So I believe,
we will struggle to get there
as long as our culture, our way of thinking,
continues to be so averse
to the possibility of changing that basic idea
that evil is to be rewarded with evil.
Think of the risk we run by confusing evil with good.
If we think that evil
is overcome, redeemed, transformed by inflicting evil,
then we mistake the evil we inflict for good,
because it is an evil that serves to erase the evil committed previously.
Yet we are doing no good to the people we lock in a cell
under the conditions I told you about earlier on.
If we think
that good may be achieved by harming a person,
then there is no longer a difference between good and evil;
we enter a state of absolute confusion and we no longer have a moral compass.
I believe that we need to give some thought to this.
Only 31 seconds to go, wait 30...
I think we need to look into this,
I think we all need to confront the problem.
But not out of a sense of humanity, which is also very important.
Let’s do it to achieve the goal
of finding a system
whereby we may all be safer than we are now.
(Applause)