A ribbon cutting with great fanfare. July 18, 2014. Then nothing. In Senorbì , nine years ago, the Icam was inaugurated in vain , an institution with attenuated custody for detained mothers, one of the five that exist in Italy. On paper, a beacon of civilization: allowing women to serve their sentences without separating from their young children and without forcing them to endure the horror of a life in prison. Yet that apartment granted by the municipal administration to the Ministry of Justice - four bedrooms with bathroom plus playroom, kitchen and courtyard - remained unused for a long time. At the beginning of the year, as certified by the Antigone Report on the national prison situation, the Municipality of Senorbì wanted to ask for it back to snatch it from the ignorance of the State and return it to the local community.
Maria Grazia Caligaris , former regional councilor of the PSI and founding member of "Socialismo Diritti Riforme", the association that has been working in the Cagliari penitentiary since 2009 to support inmates in their recovery paths, speaks about Icam.
With her, a retired teacher of Italian and History, Unionesarda.it's in-depth analysis of prisons on the island continues , a focus that began with the interview with the Regional Guarantor for prisoners, Irene Testa .
Professor, an Italian story, that of Icam in Senorbì.
«A scandal. A substantial investment for a structure that opened just on the day of its inauguration. Which, by the way, I remember very well. There was no shortage of emphasis and self-celebration. But all trace of the good intentions made has been lost."
Are there mothers with children in Sardinia's penitentiary facilities today?
«At the moment, as far as we know, none of the inmates have minor children with them. From this point of view there has been a great maturation on the part of women: despite the pain of separation, they prefer that their children not be involved in prison life. For this reason, in 2014, the opening of the Icam in Senorbì seemed like a fair compensation in the protection of mothers deprived of their freedom and excluded, like all other women, from agricultural penal colonies. But that 2014 inauguration was not followed up." "No. But if the absence of prison officers can predictably be a cause of the failure to open, it remains to be understood why public money was spent." «The condition of women in prisons, both in Sardinia and in the rest of Italy, is based on discrimination. In our country there are just four penitentiaries intended exclusively for women: all the other inmates are forced into small sections of prisons designed and built for men. It is true that the female presence is residual: in Sardinia there are around forty women out of two thousand or more inmates. We are hovering around two percent, a percentage that rises to 4 on a national basis. But this must not allow us to undermine the protection of rights." «Meanwhile there is a problem linked to culture. The women who end up in prison are, in most cases, fragile people from a social and psychological point of view. They have children, often at a young age: it means that they experience separation from them with great suffering and this makes them even more insecure and less able to react. We are faced with an objectively difficult situation. It should be added that in general the women prisoners have not committed crimes of great social danger: in fact they remain in prison for a short time. But this conditions access to training activities, given that to achieve a good level of professionalisation the courses are multi-year". «It becomes even more difficult for women to emancipate themselves once they are on the outside. Then there is the fact that the jobs offered within the prison, and this also applies to men, are of poor quality, in the sense that they do not require particular skills. The inmates are employed in the kitchen or in food delivery or are entrusted with cleaning the common areas. All jobs that are part of the routine and do not offer who knows what stimuli in terms of learning. Only recently has the possibility of employment opened up for women thanks to article 21 of the Penitentiary Code, both inside and outside penitentiary facilities. But until recently this professional outlet, dedicated precisely to supporting work, was practically precluded." «Thesis, as a rule. Precisely because of the great internal suffering that women carry with them. In the women's sections there is a lack of serenity. Even with educators, relationships are often troubled. There is a difficulty in communicating and assuming responsibility." «No physical violence. However, they show a certain difficulty in socializing among themselves. Inmates tend to combine their great capacity for personal analysis with a critical spirit towards others. However there are no attacks, I don't know. Verbal skirmishes often occur which most of the time are quickly resolved." «When arguments occur, an inmate can ask for a ban on meeting with the other section mate. The activities are therefore organized in such a way that the two neither see nor intersect." «External society has no idea what life in a cell means. Indeed: more often it is thought that detention is the solution. Instead, locking people up has only one result: removing the problem from the eyes of citizens. This is not to say that crimes should go unpunished, but it makes no sense to relegate social hardship within four walls. Institutions, at all levels, starting from the local level, should pay more attention to the prison situation. Even the Sardinian Government, through the State-Regions Conference, should take a greater interest in the problem: for example, the issue of penitentiary servitude is never addressed." «The agricultural penal colonies occupy more than six thousand hectares in Sardinia. A large portion of territory about which there would be nothing to say if there were positive effects on the recovery of prisoners. Instead their use is increasingly limited and these country structures are going to waste. Little or nothing is being done to ensure the future of penal colonies which are an effective tool for ensuring personal and professional reconstruction for those who have made mistakes." «In our association “Socialism Rights Reforms” there are six of us alternating. We guarantee our presence in both the men's and women's sections. When we do activities in the morning, we are there from 9 to 12, the time when they serve lunch. In the afternoons we start at 3pm and finish at 5pm." «We have activated a creative writing course: it involves the publication of a volume in which inmates are the protagonists. They write and we review the lyrics. Furthermore, a mural will be created, again linked to creativity. The inmates are also involved in the production of small objects, which are then destined for sale, so they can have a few euros to use inside the prison. Furthermore, through teacher Alma Piscedda, every Saturday morning we have activated an embroidery course, always in the women's section. It will then be our responsibility to promote the products created externally." "Definitely no. Each inmate must pay a fee of four euros per day. And if a person doesn't have the money, he takes the debt out once he leaves prison." «In any case, that debt, at least on paper, must be refounded. Not only that: we continually ask the prison administration to guarantee food that is as adequate as possible, because there are prisoners who don't have a euro and only eat what the administration gives them. Also because survival costs a lot."
