Italy has been condamned by the European Court for the Human Rights and will have to pay compensation to a Bosniac prisoner because of the moral damages due to the overcrowded cell he was kept in. This year we will have the highest number of suicide among the prisoners since the Italian Unity. This is an alarming situation of violence concerning in general all the realities of deprivation of liberty. Cases of assaults, self-damaging behaviour, depressive syndrome are not isolated in the detention environment.The authors' purpose is analysing the phenomenon suffered by most part of people in jail in all its aspects. They also focus their attention on the perception of all that by people outside prison. Starting from the results of the questionnaire they proposed, they give us an historical analysis of the problem, enriched by the consideration and examination of specific situations of imprisonment from an international point of view, as well as by the study of this phenomenon as based on the mechanisms of legitimation and self-legitimation, on the identification of the role and of both negative and positive reinforcements, which have their influence on the imprisoned person. From this work emerges on the one hand the reconfirmation of the inhuman and degrading situation people in jail are forced to, and on the other hand the substantial adknowledgment of the problem among people outside the jail, which is quite deep, if we just focus on the general aspects, but becomes quite superficial if we want to go deeper on the specific aspects of the problem. It's therefore evident that deeper and more specific information is needed, as it could be an instrument for much deeper and bigger knowledge of the problem and deeper confidence to face the need (no longer to be postponed) of political resolutions to this general situation.
