Prison Perspectives on Post-World War II Italian History

This paper seeks to address key-issues of the post-WWII Italian political and social history from behind bars. By taking the prison perspective, I will first observe the final phase of WWII and the post-war period and address the impact of war and the regime transition from fascism to democracy. I will subsequently look into the hidden sides of the “economic miracle” through the narratives of imprisoned internal migrants, aborted reforms and conflicting practices of “re-education”. The screams and slogans of the prisoners’ revolts of 1968-1969 will introduce the following part, on social conflict, armed struggle and the State in the “long 1970s”; once the prison cells will close up again, the focus will be on the ambiguous and short phase of “carceral modernisation” of the years 1983-1991. Finally, a look at the over-crowded prisons in the 1990s and 2000s will foreground major social and political changes in the Italian society as a whole, such as mass immigration, the impact of neoliberal policy and the crisis of the welfare state, and shifting political cultures.

The focus on human rights will run like a fil rouge through the paper and connect it to the other presentations in the panel. In particular, I will describe the long-term continuity of appalling prison conditions and social exclusion of the imprisoned subalterns, and address how both processes have been strengthened by practices of, and discourses on crime and punishment.

The paper stems from a ten-year long archival research that coalesced in the volume Camosci e girachiavi. Storia del carcere in Italia 1943-2007, published in Italian by Laterza (2009) and currently being translated in English.