Prison community, relationships and resilience. Experiences and reflections from the “Envisioning the Future” programme in the Padua prison

Abstract

When reflecting sociologically on the prison community, one usually refers to the community of prisoners. Thinking of this community in a broader way – i.e., involving all those who act in the prison field with different roles and statuses – has the potential to question the widespread representation of prison as a place inhabited by opposed social groups and instead shed light on contextual aspects that affect all social actors, structuring their forms of adaptation and common response models. The opportunity of a neuro-psycho-pedagogical training project called “Envisioning the Future” – conceived by the Patrizio Paoletti Foundation and realised with the University of Padua – addressed to the prison community in the broad sense gave the opportunity to explore this perspective. Starting from this formative experience and from a qualitative research carried out through semi-structured interviews to the prisoners that took part in the course, in this contribution we would like to reflect on the concept of prison community, in particular with regard to: (i) the exploration of relationships within the prison and the possibility for the prisoner to experience the other members of the prison community as a source of support, useful for coping with the challenges inherent to the prison experience; (ii) the possibility for the prison community to benefit in the future and in other prison contexts from formative experiences that follow this perspective.