Bignardi and Sapienza, two books to read to understand prison – Corriere.it

The most stimulating books leave you wanting to read more when you’re done reading them. “Every prison is an island” And the new book by Daria Bignardi (Mondadori – Strade blu) and will surprise those who have followed her for years on television and in her novels, because for the first time she speaks explicitly about a little-noticed passion, that of prisons. Bignardi first came to a prison as a volunteer 30 years ago and visits regularly At Navand the department of San Vittore, founded 20 years ago by Luigi Pagano. One of those characters to whom a small monument should be erected for the intelligence, the passion, the moving force with which he served for years as director of the San Vittore prison and then as deputy of the penitentiary administration. Contribution to the creation of the conditions that another great protagonist of democratic institutions, Nicolo Amatohe called it “the prison of hope.”

After I finished reading Bignardi, I finally read The Director, Pagano’s beautiful autobiography, published by Zolfo editore. And I listened to a post podcast Luigi Mastrodonato who says unbelievable things, «Thirteen», about the riots of 2020 that ended with 13 deaths in the prisons of Modena and beyond, incredibly forgotten, a real massacre treated as an inevitable accident. And then I came along Goliard wisdom. Not to his most famous book (albeit with posthumous fame and imported from France), “The Art of Joy,” but to “The University of Rebibbia», a great memoir that tells the experience of the author who ended up in Rebibbia in 1980, aged over fifty, for stealing some jewels from a friend. He will say about this theft: “A crazy rope kidnapped me, as happens to us Sicilians.” But also: “I wanted to go there somehow, to prison.” I had become too bourgeois and fragile. Too much intellectual work, too many niceties […] In Rebibbia I was reborn.

Goliarda, an actress, a writer, an intellectual who had fought in the resistance and had done this a long love story with Citto MaselliHe finds himself in the women’s section of the prison. And he writes about it with unmatched grace and ferocity. He tells of the first attempts at self-defense – “stopping the imagination”, “not immersing yourself in suffering”, milk with bromine, the “Rebibbia sun” that tans, sleeping pills for monkeys (“Zeroing Slop”), “the dark reformism”. behind which lies the most modern, aseptic and efficient fascism”, the language of feelings, the “brand of privilege” that survives in the cells, “the atrocity of being excluded from human community and left to decay», the boredom, “the moral distress”, the punitive expeditions of the guards, the fists and slaps “on us who are whip meat or trash”, the dull thuds and broken screams, the metal peephole closing.

And then the prison syndrome of those who eventually become accustomed to incarceration like a drug: «You live in a small community where your actions are tracked and recognized. You are not alone like outside. Without community there is no life.” And the stigma: “After you’ve been here once, Goliard, don’t hope you come out the way you were before.” You will never feel like one of them again, nor will you ever be them – the outsiders – ever seeing you as one of them again. You will see: when you go out, they may bring you flowers, they will welcome you, they will hug you, but their look will change forever when it lands on you.

And the sudden change of perspective and the paradoxical discovery that lies here «the only revolutionary potential that still survives the almost complete superficialization and trivialization that prevails outside»: “I have so recently escaped from the vast penal colony that exists outside, a societal life sentence divided into the rigid sections of profession, class and age, that this sudden gathering – citizens of all social statuses, cultures, Nationalities – it inevitably seems like a crazy, unexpected freedom.”

Letti Pagano and Sapienza, you can return to Bignardi, who tells a heartfelt, passionate story as a volunteer and reporter. Reading these pages is a good introduction to a world that, let’s be honest, few are really interested in. And the few who are actively interested are well described in the book. Ordinary people, but also characters like Pino Cantatore, a former prisoner who founded a cooperative in Bollate Prison; the director Lucia Castellano; Cecco Bellosi, former BR who deals with the recovery of drug addicts and troubled minors; the criminologist Adolfo Ceretti, one of the pioneers of restorative justice (along with the former judge Gherardo Colombo). AND Luca Sebastianithe lawyer who appealed to the European Court of Human Rights over the deaths in Modena.

Do you remember the deaths in Modena in 2020? No, almost no one remembers them. They had the misfortune to die on March 8, the day before Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte ordered the national lockdown. The newspapers had other things to write about, people were afraid of themselves, and this complicated story of riots and deaths didn’t find much place in the general entropy.

Still, it’s a shocking story. It happens that there are riots all over Italy because Covid was scary even in prison and visits from relatives were also interrupted as a precautionary measure. In Sant’Anna in Modena there is an attack on the infirmary. Nine people die: four in prison and five when transferred to other prisons. Another three die in Rieti and one in Bologna. Listening to the podcast “Tredici” – and reading Sara Manzoli’s book “Deaths in a Silent City” – makes it easy to explain what happened or could have happened. Some of these prisoners died from overdoses of methadone, which has a peculiarity: it causes people to die hours or even days after taking it. The inmates who took it from the infirmary should be hospitalized and placed under observation. Instead, they are postponed. And they are found dead in the cells. You fall lifeless to the ground, right in front of a prison.

They had all been to Sant’Anna in Modena. All but one were foreigners. There are testimonies that cast doubt on whether they all died from methadone. We’re talking about beatings, about beatings. Of course there are no videos. As always, out of order. And the bodies were cremated because of Covid. No one wanted to investigate the matter too deeply. It was decided to archive immediately. There was more to do, more to think about. Luca Sebastiani, together with the late Valerio Onida, has appealed the dismissal to the European Court of Human Rights, which will be heard in May.

This incredible tragedy ended up in a corner of the news and, as Bignardi writes, was treated as a side effect of Covid». Today, when prisons are overcrowded due to overcrowding and sanitary conditions, today when suicides are at record levels (32 and 4 officers in 2024), more unrest is on the way, more deaths await us. Everyone who needs to know knows it, but many act as if they don’t know. The others, that would be us, that would be you, can know if they want, for example by reading and listening Bignardi, Sapienza, Pagano, Mastrodonato and so forth. It’s on Radio Radicale Riccardo Arena Incredibly alone since 2002, he edits, directs, hosts and produces “Radio Prison” twice a week, with interviews and discussions fundamental to knowing what’s happening. He also organized a meeting between the ANM and the Union of Criminal Chambers, an unprecedented event that will take place on Tuesday April 23rd in Rome. Then they are there Antigone (founded in the 80s by Massimo Cacciari, Stefano Rodotà and Rossana Rossanda), Hands off Cain (Rita Bernardini and the Radicals), bars
From
Sugar (former prisoners of Verona), Restricted (Ornella Favero) and many others. And thousands of volunteers who, like Daria Bignardi, work every day to change today’s prison, which has become the result of political indifference Social dump and school of crime.