Education in prison. The Italian profile

17Thematic ArticleHungarian Educational Research Journal2018, Vol. 8(4) 17‒30© The Author(s) 2018http://herj.lib.unideb.huDebrecen University PressDOI:10.14413/HERJ/8/4/2Education in Prison: The Italian ProfileTeresa Savoia4AbstractThe following contribution is thought as a reflection on the theme of education in prisonin the Italian context, so as to supply sufficient elements of critical knowledge of it andopen to a confrontation with other national situations, through the analysis of the othercontribution on the same topic which are presented in this volume of HERJ. As it isknown, in several modern European countries, education in prison was born with theconcept of prison itself. In the process for the theorization of prison, a major debatearose from the thoughts of Cesare Beccaria, an Italian intellectual. He formulated a penalsystem where education was considered the final end of incarceration and also the onlyway to prevent crime. Two centuries later his ideas have become a founding principle ofthe Italian Constitution where it is stated that prison must tend to the re-education ofinmates. Efforts have been made along the years, to build up a penitentiary system thatreflected the constitutional mandate. Laws and decrees have passed to apply in practicalinstances these issues and also absorb the European Prison Rules. A study made in 2012by the author shows some profiles of prisoners from an educational point of view. Areflection is presented that emerges from the analysis of the correlation between somebackground variables and literacy achievements. It shows how education in prison isfundamental to break the process of deprivation of alphabetical skills but, at the sametime, conflicts with some contradictions of the system.