Casa Circondariale Livorno - Le Sughere Prison

The Le Sughere Prison:

The Le Sughere prison, built in 1984, is located on the outskirts of Livorno. Currently there is only the male section. Inside, some activities are carried out such as theater, sports, reading courses, literacy school courses and vocational secondary schools, IT and languages. The scarce availability of a large common space - such as a projection room or a theater - limits the development of social and cultural activities intended to support the educational treatment.

Knowledge and culture are seemed as essential elements of a process of reworking the negative choices of the past and a cornerstoen towards the construction of new existential scenarios.

Host:

Guido Ricci
Clinical Psychologist and Community
Psychotherapist
Vice President Linc scs Onlus

Program:

Sunday 3 April

• Dinner in Livorno organized by the host to plan the meeting in Casa Circondariale Livorno

Monday 4 April

• Visit Casa Circondariale Livorno
• Meeting organized by the director of the prison, the security and the content (the school, the health department etc.)
• Tour in the prison

Thuesday 5 April

• Cultural day in Elba
• Visit Villa Del Mulini (Napoleons recidence in Elba)
• Visit Villa San Martino (Napoleons recidence in Elba)
• Tour on the iland of Elba

Wednesday 6 April

• Visit House of Detention Elba
• Meeting with the director and staff at the prison.
• Tour in the prison

About the House of Detention Elba

The Fort dates back to the XVII century, when the Port of Longone was under Spanish dominion. Work was started in 1603, under the guidance of the viceroy of Naples Giovanni Alfonso Pimentel de Herrera, with the aim of streghthening the defence system already in force and hence gaining better control over the sea traffic.

For all of the XVII and XVIII centuries, the fort underwent numerous sackages on behalf of the powers at war against Spain, considered a threat from the beginning.

In 1814, when Napoleon landed in Elba, some rooms in the fort were lent to the Emperor for him to use while he stayed there, and that he then kept as third residence after Villa dei Mulini and the Villa in San Martino.

Towards the end of the year 1800, Fort Longone finally became a defence building and aquired strategic importance. The local administrators requested and obtained permission for the buildng to be turned into a prison, something that proved to be an excellent source of work at a time when those living in Porto Longone were going through a severe economical crisis.

The prison however soon became famous for terrible living conditions of the prisoners, giving it the name of one the worst prisons in Italy. One of the reasons was that the prison was overcrowded. In the 90s, there were approx. 500 prisoners there, while there are now approx. 230 inmates. So things greatly improved as the years went by.

The fort is still a prison today, and despite the fact that the seventeenth century Church dedicated to Saint James the Great, an excellent exampe of Baroque art, is inside the structure. 

In generall we from Norway were impressed by projects run by the prisons and it was especially interesting to hear about the prison system's ties to professional actors such as wine producers, design bag production, etc.

Also, it seems like a common challenge for many countries to give inmates access to the internet and expanded data usage. But this prisons' use of distance learning was impressive and the use of this was developed comered to Norway.

Thoughts after visiting Italian prisons:

The world is changing but do the justice department, and the schools in prison, follow up!?

We often talk about the importance of digital competence. In Norway almost every public document is delivered in a form for digitized document, and in the curriculum digital competence is pointed out as a key competence to succeed in learning and in living in the society of today. Firstly it has to be said that the employees in the prison told us that not all public document in Italy was digitized, but you could assume that in some years it will be like that in Italy as well.

In Italy we visited two prisons, both of them did use some digitized aids to keep in contact with the society outside prison in form of videocalls to family and relatives. In this way the inmates learn that this is a possibility to interact with others, but since the inmates aren’t allowed to touch the tablet/smartphone you cannot say that the inmates are building digital competence in this way.

In the two prisons we learned about two very different prison schools. The prison in Livorno recently bought two computers to use in the school, but for now they haven’t been able to use them since they are not functionable in the prison!?

In the prison on Elba they had a big smartboard/interactive board in every classroom, and in the close-down due the covid virus they had been using distance learning. They had sound and camera both ways so the students could interact with their teachers. (This is more than we can do in Norway, since we don’t have camera out of the prison through DFS, the prison ICT system for school.)

Anyhow the use of distance learning, which is a good thing for the inmates considering the alternative, probably won’t build any digital competence for the inmates either.

When we asked if the inmates had a computer to do their school assignments the answer was short and clear; “No, no, no, no!” When asking a teacher about this, she answered: “Don’t make me laugh!”

It seems to be same in Italy as it is in Norway, the school would like to have more access to computers fore the inmates, but the justice department/the local prison is concerned about it. Why is the computer a threat to the prison society when it is considered a help and a must have outside? And if the inmates have limited or no access to computers, how should they develop digital competence to measure up to what they need when they are released?

The visit in Italy didn’t give and answer on how inmates could build digital competence, but it did show that we are more alike in they way we try to help inmates get a new life. Also in Italy they try to make them more ready for coping a work, both in formal education, work training but also in working with health issues that could limited the chance of getting a job. They had many possibilities as long as the work didn’t involve a computer.

Could you be a part of society without access to a computer? In the prison society absolutely, but in society outside it’s more questionable. When we wanted to learn more about “digital competence in European prisons and citizenship”, we wanted to see how we could prepare inmates to cope the digital society outside prisons as well. So far inmates in Norwegian prisons have some possibilities they don’t have in Italy, but still that’s limited.

At the moment it seems to be necessary for the school to think outside the box but within prison regulations, to give the inmates a little bit of the digital competence they will need when they are released. For instance, in form of dummy programs who don’t interact, but could give some references on how to do different digital tasks you need to do in daily living.  

We might not find all answers in Italy, but we learned a lot about citizenship in another European country, and we learned that when it comes to content in prison, we aim for the same; to give the inmates a better chance of a new life through school and/or work.

We will investigate further, and therefore we say: to be continued…