Accusati di indulto. Incontro con Andrea Boraschi, Luigi Manconi e Giuliano Pisapia

Abstract

The debate held on 20th October 2006 following the controversy in Italy relating to the granting of a pardon to prisoners by the Parliament, involved many politicians, law experts (L.Manconi, G. Pisapia, A. Boraschi, F.Dall’Olio) and psychiatrists (M. Fagioli, P. Fiori Nastro). It questioned the meaning of prisons and sentences. The various speakers approached the subject from many angles but all concurred with the fact that the almost exclusive use of a prison sentence, which characterizes the Italian judicial system, expresses the will to “remove” a range of social problems from the public eye, thus radically contradicting the ultimate aim of a prison sentence which should, according to the Italian Constitution, reform the prisoner. What we find, however, is the idea of punishment which derives from a religious or moral judgement and can lead to the annihilation of the person. The problem of assessing the personality of the accused and the question of his/her possible “re-education” involves a series of complex questions that force us to deal with the sticky question of the ever-conflictual relationship between psychiatrists and the magistrature.