"Stati Generali dell‟esecuzione penale": fuori le competenze pedagogiche e le professionalità educative

Abstract

In the light of the work carried out by the working tables of the ‘General meeting on the Enforcement of Criminal Penalties’ (March-December 2015), whose aim is to reform the Italian prison system, this paper contests the choice of the Italian Ministry of Justice to ignore the scientific and technical resources of experts in Educational Science. Leaders in pedagogy and educators are totally absent, neither involved nor consulted, regarding the alleged will of the Italian government to make sweeping reforms of the current prison system in the wake of the European Court of Human Rights’ call for a fair and dignified use of imprisonment. Forty years on from the last Italian prison reforms, the Court of Strasbourg requires the organisation of a system that gives voice to the weak, the marginalised, and those condemned to social exclusion, dovetailing with the need for education, culture, knowledge, the protection of human rights, and a guarantee of progressive emancipation and humanisation. This contribution argues that through space and time, these tasks and functions universally belong to education in its most complex forms of intervention.