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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_41-bis_prison_regimeRestrictive measures thesystem was essentially intended to cut inmates off completely from their original milieu and to separate them from their former criminal associates. Measures normally include:
a ban on the use of the telephone;
a ban on all association or correspondence with other prisoners;
a ban on meetings with third parties;
restrictions on visits from members of the family (once per month and visitors are only allowed to communicate by intercom through thick glass);
a ban on receiving or sending sums of money over a set amount;
a ban on receiving parcels (other than those containing linen) from the outside;
a ban on organising cultural, recreational or sporting activities;
a ban on voting or standing in elections for prisoner representatives;
a ban on taking part in arts-and-crafts activities, etc.The strategy of the bosses against the 41 bis, Sebastiano Ardita's essay traces the history of 41 bis, from Falcone to today, raising the question of relations between Cosa Nostra and the State
by Roberto Saviano
"I pray to God to make me endure all of what is right to endure," said Binnui u trtturi (sheep tracks) when in 2006 after 43 years on the run was brought to the prison of Terni for his sentence to 41 bis. A trite phrase, but if you pronounce by Bernardo Provenzano you must stop and think about how the concepts of
justice and forbearance of the penalty able to be objective. Of what can happen when the mechanism does not work, if the person who is serving a sentence does not recognize as legitimate. Upon arrival of Bernardo Provenzano, all inmates held in Terni were silent as if they were celebrating a rite of passage.
That awed silence meant: "We impose your rules, but we have our own".
In these days Sebastiano Ardita's book Ricatto allo Stato ( Blackmail to the State) (Sperling & Kupfer), that brings his experiences to the DAP (Prison
Administration Department) and makes a series of assessments on the impact that imprisonment has had since its first introduction to politics and the Italian civil society. Showing, once again, as prisons are the litmus test for the proper functioning of a democratic state. Sebastiano Ardita is Sicilian and in 1992 he isonly 25 yearsold and after the massacres of Capaci and Via D'Amelio began his career as a prosecutor in Catania, a city poisoned by a powerful
Mafia. In 2002, he is in DAP and i knew him , during my research on the imprisonment of detainees and convicted Mafia.
He is man who can withstand pressures in spite of every shape and strength, place in the most fragile and complex mechanism to combat the mafia: the prison.
But let's step back to see how does the 41-bis. The imprisonment was already in the projects of Giovanni Falcone when he accepted the assignment of criminal
cases to the Office of the Ministry of Justice. It had to be a tool to prevent bosses from continuing to operate the prison. A last resort, but not in conflict with human rights and the principles of our Constitution. The project, however, was only a draft at the time of the bombing of Capaci and Via D'Amelio, and its first application was dictated by the need to react to the deep crisis and deep despair in which Italy found itself following the massacres of 1992. The law generally alluded to "serious reasons for order and public security" under which, the Minister of Justice could suspend the normal rules of detention and order the 41-bis. Have actually existed, however, rules that define the special arrangements; It only remains to refer to the experience from our country with the struggle against terrorism in the seventies. Were introduced a number of limitations that heightened prison life including a ban on phone calls and talk with other prisoners, the obligation to monitor correspondence, interviews with family members once a month and for an hour and the lower two hours of air daily. They were very quickly re-opened the prisons and on the islands of Asinara and Pianosa for the first 369 prisoners for which it was placed on a 41 bis.
Those first months on the islands, the Mafia, were undoubtedly hard and immediately landed controversy in Parliament about possible human rights violations.
As of December 1992 was a report by Amnesty International in which they were reported ill-treatment of detainees in Pianosa.
According to Ardita, its first application, the special prison regime was not working as it should. This is why in his introduction, not only did not stop the massacres, but there were other, more violent, in response to measures taken by the State. By the attack of May 14, 1993 in Rome on Via Ruggero Fauro, that being on Georgofili street in Florence, one in Via Palestro in Milan ,there is the blackmail to the state.
A few months earlier, in February 1993, relatives of detainees to 41 bis in prison of Pianosa had addressed to the President of the Republic, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro-exposed a letter in which he denounced the poor conditions that their relatives suffered in the prison and violence they suffered. Asked the Head of State to demonstrate that it was not what happened in the islands.
Officially, no answer ever came. It is interesting to dwell on the other recipients, included for information in that document: the Pope, the bishop of Florence, Maurizio Costanzo.Ardita Suggests that those address list was some sort of victim-list and that the letter should have been exposed, in hindsight, more attention. If this letter constitutes a warning, if we can identify a connection between its contents and how much was claimed by Giovanni Brusca repented during the deposition at trial for the massacre in via Georgofili, when and with what results there have been negotiations between the state and the Mafia ,the maxi-trial and 41 bis , it is important to decipher and deal at the same time slippery ground on which to move, until there are no final judgments that reconstruct what happened in those terrible, further, night of the Republic . Yet understanding this passage is crucial to understand on what fragile balance has been established the second Republic.
WhoArdita write is important as it helps to understand
how in fact the successive governments over time have never been able to go beyond the level of repression, as they never fought the mafia on the only ground on which we must beat them: the economy. This would require a comprehensive reform of our legal system, which could and should build a great reformation of justice, that is not hostage to the needs of low satrap of turn, but the realization of the democratic spirit of our own Constitution.
The result, almost 20 years since the introduction of a 41 bis is that the knowledge we have today on the Italian criminal organizations there are also those years of running, served to recognize them to study them to make them come into the open. Today, 41 bis is the result of continuous changes over the years. It is the result of the commitment of people like Sebastiano Ardita and Pietro Grasso, National Anti-Mafia Directorate since 2005. And to those who argue theunconstitutionality of a prison regime emergency situation, say that Italy is the country which has the world's most powerful mafias and that it is necessary
that the scales there is not only the loss of personal freedom, but also the inability to continue to give orders as he is serving his sentence.
Here, however, have to widen the debate to the state of prisons and justice in Italy. Inmates end up in contempt for the laws of our democratic countries considered meaningless because it disregarded its own in place dedicated to their rehabilitation, the rehabilitation of those who did wrong. It is a "is a terrible emergency that humiliates us in front of Europe," said the President Napolitano two days ago, at the request of the Radicals, held a special session of the Senate on the emergence prisons, which ended in a stalemate.
It is extremely difficult to understand that the instrument before you think of detention as a real deterrent to future crimes you have to deal with a justice system close to collapse: If you do not want to take the road of the amnesty, at least the government is committed to propose and above all a credible alternative to concrete. Because if the state is absent and rehabilitation fails, the mafias are always there, lurking, careful recruiting, taking advantage of inconsistencies in the system.
That's the disheartening part of the Italian penal system, too often obliged to accommodate, through detention, fears that this government foments towards
the different, the stranger, the outcast. The prison as a means of rehabilitation and imprisonment as a possibility to make entire sections of mindless
criminal organizations have meaning only if they are part of a complete democracy, virtuous and running. But at present there are sufficient measures are not enough to diminish the power of the mafias that is, I repeat, an economic power. (Ricatto allo Stato) (Blackmail to the State) is an important part in this debate. The writing is honest, a man of State. And honestly, never as now, Italy has the need to avoid the greatest tragedy, to live honestly believe that is basically useless now.
(September 23, 2011)
