Punishment and Prisons

La tesi di Laurea in Architettura dal titolo “L’ISOLA DELLA PENA, L’ARCHITETTURA DEL RISCATTO. Castiadas, la più grande Colonia penale agricola d’Italia”, riguarda lo studio dell’ex Colonia penale agricola di Castiadas e dei suoi fabbricati.
L’intento è stato quello di ricercare ed analizzare i documenti, molti dei quali inediti, secondo un approccio di tipo scientifico, per poter ricomporre i processi storici, politici ed architettonici che hanno contraddistinto la nascita e l’evoluzione dell'ex Carcere, dall'impianto nel 1875 ai successivi ampliamenti, fino alla sua chiusura.

While verses detailing hellish suffering are plentiful in Dante’s Purgatory, the poet unambiguously represents Hell as an eternal prison which he strikingly carves out in Inferno 10 dedicated to the heretics where we discover Farinata and Cavalcante in one of the most poignant cantos of the 'Inferno.'

In this essay, I will focus on Dante and Virgil’s entrance into lower Hell (the city of Dis) and particularly Circle 6 dedicated to the heretics with the objective of exploring how the poet constructs and amplifies the metaphor of Hell as a prison which echoes the characterization delineated in the widely read apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus where Christ’s Descent into Hell is described as a liberation of pre-Christian souls from Satan’s infernal prison-house.  My reading of Dante’s poem aims to enhance our understanding of Inferno 10 by revealing another layer of meaning in this very complex canto through the notion of Hell as a place of eternal confinement.

Recensione del volume "Volti e maschere della pena. Opg e carcere duro, muri della pena e giustizia riparativa", Aa. Vv., a cura di F. Corleone e A. Pugiotto, Roma, Ediesse, 2013, apparsa in Rassegna bibliografica, Riv. it. dir. proc. pen., n. 3/2014.

Compléments documentaires à l'article de Michel Flouquet "Louis Joseph Bruneaux, un destin hors du commun" paru dans la revue n°17 en septembre 2017.

Du même auteur, dans la collection "Histoire des Weppes" :
- 1915 : Adolf Hitler à Wicres, 2018
- Nos cousins célèbres d'Amérique originaires de Wicres, 2018
- Compléments à l'histoire de Louis Joseph Bruneaux, 2018
- Compléments à l'histoire des cloches de Marquillies, 2018
- Parentèle Dubois & Lepoivre, 2023

This symposium piece argues, among other things, that: (i) corrective justice (broadly construed) requires compensating exonerees (and thus compensating is not merely supererogatory), (ii) we should think of compensation as a form of backpay for deterrence services rendered, simply in virtue of an innocent person's incarceration, (iii) doing so best explains and justifies the lock-step compensation structure that most compensation statutes already provide, and (iv) analogical reasoning can help guide the inquiry into the range of backpay that the state owes the exoneree, by comparing the circumstances of incarceration with similarly high-stress and dangerous occupations. State legislatures may still face financial obstacles in providing what justice requires to the exonerated. But no principled opposition to compensation exists consistent with the demands of justice.

This paper analyzes recent developments in the outsourcing of prison contracts to highlight the relationship between oversight and legitimacy.  When the government outsources an inherently governmental function (IGF) or a function closely associated with an IGF, oversight and monitoring of the contractor becomes central to maintaining the direction of the contractor and control over government policy.  Developing greater methods of oversight and monitoring of government contractors will help overcome the informational asymmetries that arise between contractors performing such functions and the government.  Private prisons are but one example of how weak oversight can undermine the legitimacy of the government's decision to outsource a closely-associated function.

In the mid-1990s, as public trust in big government was near an all-time low, 80% of Americans told Gallup that they supported the death penalty. Why did people who didn’t trust government to regulate the economy or provide daily services nonetheless believe that it should have the power to put its citizens to death?

That question is at the heart of Executing Freedom, a powerful, wide-ranging examination of the place of the death penalty in American culture and how it has changed over the years. Drawing on an array of sources, including congressional hearings and campaign speeches, true crime classics like In Cold Blood, and films like Dead Man Walking, Daniel LaChance shows how attitudes toward the death penalty have reflected broader shifts in Americans’ thinking about the relationship between the individual and the state. Emerging from the height of 1970s disillusion, the simplicity and moral power of the death penalty became a potent symbol for many Americans of what government could do—and LaChance argues, fascinatingly, that it’s the very failure of capital punishment to live up to that mythology that could prove its eventual undoing in the United States.

El trabajo que aquí se ofrece se ha propuesto describir las reconfiguraciones históricas observadas en el sistema penitenciario de Estados Unidos, y su impacto en la realidad argentina. Orienta esta propuesta la hipótesis de considerar que las reconfiguraciones en el sistema penitenciario norteamericano, mediadas en algunas ocasiones por la experiencia europea continental, han provocado efectos directos en las representaciones sobre la pena en el país, y el modo en que ha sido finalmente plasmado su sistema carcelario.
Lejos de un anecdotario histórico, este trabajo comparte la preocupación bourdieana de que la investigación social “correría el riesgo de perder su sentido y su eficacia si, permitiendo que se disocie de la práctica de la cual ha partido y a la que debe retornar, se le permitiera existir con esa existencia irreal y neutralizada de las ‘tesis’ teóricas o los discursos epistemológicos”.

The spread of crimmigration policies, practices, and rhetoric represents an economically rational strategy and has significant implications for the lived experience of noncitizen immigrants. This study draws upon in-depth interviews of immigrants with a range of legal statuses to describe the mechanics through which immigrants internalize and respond to the fear of deportation, upon which crimmigration strategies rely. The fear of deportation and its behavioral effects extend beyond undocumented or criminally convicted immigrants, encompassing lawful permanent residents and naturalized citizens alike. This fear causes immigrants to refuse to use public services, endure labor exploitation, and avoid public spaces, resulting in social exclusion and interrupted integration, which is detrimental to US society as a whole.

Penal abolitionism is a radical style of thinking which acknowledges that there are many different ways of interpreting and understanding problematic behaviours, troubles and human conflicts and that when it comes to prison sentences it is often more about the person who breaks the law than the illegality that has been perpetrated. Penal abolitionists question the very assumptions of the criminal law and argue that rather than providing a solution, the criminal law is much more likely to create new social problems.

Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo investigar a existência de mecanismos de produção da
desigualdade racial na atuação das polícias do estado de São Paulo. Os dados sobre a
produtividade policial publicados periodicamente não permitem a análise pela variável
cor/raça dos envolvidos. Em busca de indicadores que permitissem esta observação, a
equipe de pesquisa firmou uma parceria com a Ouvidoria da Polícia do Estado de São
Paulo para a produção de uma base de dados sobre a letalidade policial com
informações sobre o perfil das vítimas e dos policiais, incluindo a variável cor/raça de
ambos. Além da letalidade, a prisão em flagrante também foi usada como indicador,
porém, como os dados divulgados pela Secretaria de Segurança Pública do Estado de
São Paulo também não possibilitam a observação da variável cor/raça, a Coordenadoria
de Análise e Planejamento forneceu uma consulta específica à base de registro de
ocorrência, o que permitiu conhecer a distribuição das prisões em flagrante efetuadas
segundo a cor/raça dos presos. Os resultados da análise destas duas bases apontaram
que os negros são a maioria das vítimas de mortes praticadas por policiais,
especialmente os jovens e do sexo masculino. Também foi possível observar que a
proporção de negros presos em flagrante é maior do que a de brancos e que a maior
parte dos autores das mortes são policiais militares, sendo que parte significativa
pertence a grupamentos especiais, com destaque para a Força Tática. A conclusão da
pesquisa é que a desigualdade racial na segurança pública é evidenciada pela intensa
vigilância e ação policial violenta sobre um grupo populacional específico, ao passo que
outros grupos populacionais são menos visados sendo surpreendidos com menor
frequência em suas práticas. Os resultados são indicativos também de que,
possivelmente, as atividades criminais mais frequentemente cometidas por negros sejam
mais vigiadas, ao passo que atividades criminais mais comuns entre brancos despertem
menor atenção da polícia.

This article submits that the confluence of language and power proliferate social strata and exacts violence on subaltern bodies in a punitive age of mass incarceration. I explore racialized social hierarchies in Judeo- Christian sacred texts and its relationship to secular texts that mark subaltern bodies for punishment. I argue that hegemonic scriptural economies perpetuate discursive violence that is evident in the imperial use of jurisprudence to warehouse black bodies in a prison industrial complex. In response, proclamations of protest become the voice of victors to self-name, overcome silence and rewrite histories as authors of subaltern narratives of resistance.

Contemporary political ethics has to face the question of how to repair relations which have broken down after crimes, oppression, and political violence. The book employs the work of European and feminist philosophers, including Jacques Derrida, Albert Camus, Simone Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, Jean-Paul Sartre, Giorgio Agamben, Immanuel Kant, Jean Améry, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Margaret Urban Walker and Linda Radzik to engage with historical and recent cases: the post-liberation French purge, post-genocide Rwanda and post-colonial Australia and draws out the negative and positive conditions of ethical political responses in these contexts. It develops a philosophical account of ethical restoration through focusing on just punishment, guilt and shame, rebuilding political trust, forgiveness and reconciliation, remorse and atonement, and self-forgiveness.

The paper examines three central problems involving punitive social control in recent decades: first, the steady increase in the number of incarcerated people (the phenomenon of great confinement), with special emphasis on the Brazilian case; second, the way criminology interprets contemporary confinement (New Penology); and finally, the lack of a (dogmatic) criminal law theory on the reality of mass incarceration. Incarceration data are presented here as premises in order to inquire about the relations between the (normative-philosophical) theories regarding the justification of punishment and the (empirical) phenomena of mass incarceration. The questions behind the current reflection are therefore about what role criminal theories play in the expansion or contraction of the power to punish (potestas puniendi) and the explanations the justification models offer to the problem of hyper-punishment.

Contemporary culture is replete with carnivalesque representations of violence and this has accelerated with the development of online technology. Felony Fights is a website and set of DVDs depicting real combat between male former convicts and other men. Viewer responses to these clips reflect a complexity of meaning and symbolic associations between violence, power and masculine identities. Nevertheless, profoundly unequal relations of power shape their production and viewing appeal. The embodied and affective dimensions of marginality and poverty are presented in Felony Fights as evidence of the animal brutality and carceral character of the fighters. This resonates with populist explanations for criminal violence and mainstream portrayals of male masochism in which white men are depicted as a victimized social group.

Yog or Yoga is a way of life, developed by Indian saints thousands of years ago. It has been practiced by billions of people since then and is still being practiced by millions around the world.  In 2014, the United Nations has proclaimed the International Day of Yoga. Since 2016, Yoga may be regarded as one of the instruments for the implementation of the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Goals. Yoga as the science for right living and an instrument for the treatment of offenders is the subject of this criminological essay. It provides empirical insights into the treatment through Yoga via the spectrum of criminological findings and reviews.
Keywords: Yoga, Behavior, Mind, Offenders, United Nations Sustainable development goals.

Objective We examine whether affective, verbal, and restitutive displays of remorse are associated with perceived offender immorality, as well as whether displays of remorse exert indirect effects on preferences for criminal sentencing via perceived offender immorality. Method Data are from an online survey, which included a sentencing vignette with experimental manipulations for offender remorse and items measuring sentencing preferences, perceived offender and offense immorality, and controls (N = 352). OLS regression and bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals were used to estimate direct and indirect effects. Replication analyses were conducted with two student samples (N = 103 and N = 131). Results Displays of remorse were associated with perceived offender immorality. Displays of remorse also exerted indirect effects on preferences for sentencing severity and support for particular sentencing goals (including incapacitation, rehabilitation, and restoration). Conclusions Affective, verbal, and restitutive displays of remorse may be associated with sentencing preferences via perceived offender immorality.

Indsattes internetadgang udgør et højaktuelt og relativt uudforsket menneskeretligt spørgsmål om statens mulighed for at begrænse borgernes rettigheder som led i frihedsberøvelsen. Den stadig voksende rolle, som internettet spiller samfundsmæssigt, arbejdsmæssigt, kulturelt og socialt, har medført en naturlig udvikling i omfanget af litteratur, der ser på internettet med menneskeretlige briller, ligesom domstolene har fået forelagt sager om spørgsmålet. I denne artikel ser vi nærmere på denne problemstilling med fokus på spørgsmålet om frihedsberøvedes adgang til internettet: Hvad er deres rettigheder, og hvilke er de relevante menneskeretlige principper og hensyn?

According to the Council of Europe annual penal statistics (Space I) the Italian penitentiary system is always affected by prison overcrowding and it is often in the last positions of this particular ranking. Nevertheless, the overall number of people detained in Italy is lower than the European average and median.
The publication of these statistics stimulates, on a regular basis, newspapers reports and even scientific papers offering opposite solutions: sometimes increasing the total number of places available in penal institutions for the accommodation of the inmates, more often reducing the number of persons detained. Actually, the annual reports of the Council of Europe are not useful to understand the real extent of the phenomenon of prison overcrowding and do not even allow comparisons between the various national penitentiary systems. This is explicitly stated by the same researchers drafting the Space I reports. Unfortunately, however, this correct warning is not mentioned by Council of Europe press releases, which, in a misleading way, merely propose the “ranking” of the States where the prison density is higher, without informing the reader of its unreliability.
The Authors underline how this behavior of the Council of Europe Press Office is not new and ends up inducing, indirectly, the Member States to provide more and more incomplete data on the issue of prison overcrowding. Therefore, it seems indispensable that, in the near future, such a prestigious International Organization should make its communication clearer on a sensitive and important topic for the image of the Member States, such as prison overcrowding.

El artículo es un acercamiento a la realidad de las mujeres privadas de libertad y las discriminaciones que supone el sistema penitenciario para ellas. Comienza con una caracterización sobre el perfil de las reclusas, y sigue con un análisis de los aspectos relacionados con la transgresión social del delito. A continuación, se efectúa un estudio de los efectos que tiene para ellas el ingreso en prisión, finalizando con un análisis de las discriminaciones que les afectan a nivel de infraestructura, maternidades, derechos sexuales y reproductivos, salud, sanciones y formación.  Las duras condiciones que impone la cárcel se agravan considerablemente en su caso, generando un daño irreparable no solo para ellas y sus familias sino para toda la sociedad.