Sp.In. Genoa: a treatment model for released prisoners, parolees and their families

Abstract

In this paper we present the experience of a service in Genoa called Sp.In. (“Information Desk”), which deals with prisoners in external enforcement, or subject to precautionary measures, or at the end of their detention, and with their families. The service is aimed at the help of prisoners, in the difficult moment of the end of detention, in order to give advice and support to them, according to a treatment and reeducational stance.

The so-called Welfare-mix, capable both of promoting community’s resources, as a networking system, and of recognizing and strengthening individual’s ones, is the frame and model from which the Sp.In. Service has been generated, and from which it has taken root in our territory. Changes in political and legislative context have impacted upon the evolution of Sp.In.’s original setting: an action-research methodology has been adopted, from the original building of an information and reception service, to the shaping of integrated and customized paths of legality and social rehabilitation. Our descriptive framework will be supported by statistical data. The final purpose of the paper is to provide some tools and guidelines for the construction of interventions aimed at the treatment of deviant subjects, in a framework of legality.