Actuality and opportunities in Italian community sentences

Abstract

In a period in which the only answer at crime and insecurity of citiziens is prison we wanted to follow historic steps that have carried at the building of prisons (from Middle Ages to XX century) asking us about their actuality and efficiency. In particulary the Authors have examinated an aspect of penal execution that is often forgotten or negletted but, in our opinion, it must be made stronger: alternative measures to prison. We have made a legislative analysis from the Law 354/1975 to the Law Gozzini to understand, with words of its Author, the spirit which carried to the introduction of an alternative street to prison. “Fathers” of this law have understood that if a person is part of the society also when he/she committed a crime – instead of staying in prison doing nothing – there are few possibilities that he/she will break the law again. Even if statistic numbers about alternative measures are positive, people are strongly disinformed about theirs effects. At all levels: from lawer to housewife, from policemen to teacher. And can we allow that with the apology of a low information prison becomes the only possibility to fight crime? As we can see from questionnaires we have handed out, also the distortion of reality on this topic is a known point, but not for this reason must be unchangeable too!