PRISON. - The Romans called carcer the place of custody for those condemned to the death penalty or to corporal punishments; and, both among them and among nearly all ancient peoples, the c. did not have the character of a penalty as a place of isolation and detention for a determined time. Above all it served to ensure the presence of the accused at trial.
The c. were filthy places, where the previously convicted or the accused, without distinction of sex or age, were shut up promiscuously. After the advent of Christianity, greater consideration was shown to the detainee.
Traces of more humane treatment of prisoners are found in the times of Constantine (320); but even in subsequent times the horror of dark and unhealthy dens, of chains and of afflictions in every form continued.
The concept that the c. should become a true and proper place of expiation, for a determined time, arose in the following centuries. Once certain forms of atrocity, which were in part connected with the brevity of the period of detention, were abandoned, provision was increasingly made to render the c., as a place of expiation, more humane.
In this process of transformation of the concept and practice of imprisonment the Church exercised an effective action, suggesting gentleness and mercy in various times and places. Following the word of Jesus (Mt. 25:36), it included among the works of mercy that of visiting prisoners; and its thousand-year history is rich in documents that testify to its constant solicitude toward those struck by human justice, by instilling in their souls faith and hope in divine goodness and justice. In the lives of very many saints there are found heroic episodes in the assistance of prisoners.
When around the 16th-17th century the detention system became more common also because the whirlwind of political events advised sparing human lives, often commuting capital punishments to harsh imprisonment, Pope Innocent X (Pamphili) in 1647 had a large building constructed in Rome to receive the prisoners transferred from the horrible prisons of Corte Savella, later razed to the ground, and of Torre di Nona. The construction was completed in 1655 under Alexander VII (Chigi). In that age there was a true revolution of the prison system and an absolute novelty as a construction of a house of detention. It was called "C. Novo"; it had spacious, healthy, luminous premises and even with latrines that emptied into a well-arranged sewer system.
In the building there is currently the criminal museum and there is the following plaque, placed still in those times: «Iustitiae et clementiae - securiori ac meliori reorum custodiae - novum carcerem - Innocentius X Pont. Max. - posuit - Anno Domini - MDCLV».
From then on, here and there, attempts were begun to give the custodial penalty the possibility of finding in work a means of re-education, and in many countries so-called forced labor was organized. C. for reclusion arose in many cities of Europe on the model of the "C. Novo". However, there was still a long way to go from that idea of the humanization of penalties which was to have so profound an upheaval in the modern age, especially after the appearance of Cesare Beccaria's book Dei delitti e delle pene. But decisively, to win the battle against the brutality of the c., John Howard, b. at Hackney in 1726, was to contribute, who gave norms for nighttime segregation, for work, for the salubrity of the c. After him there was a significant improvement, down to modern times, in which the concept of liberty has been inserted into the various systems of execution. That is to say, especially in the American countries, that the c. must be a place that deprives the citizen of the freedom to move about as he pleases, so that he may ever better appreciate the good of liberty itself. The c., according to those systems, must not add to the punishment of deprivation of liberty other afflictions that debase man or destroy him physically and morally. The director general of American prisons, Sanford Bates, expresses himself thus: «The c. of tomorrow should be at once a school of discipline for those who can be redeemed, a place of permanent segregation for the incorrigible, and a laboratory for the study of the causes of delinquency».
Detention in these modern c. also has its correctives of penalty, which are: a) probation, used especially in the United States of America, which allows the condemned person to live in society; b) parole, which is a kind of supervised liberty, that is, it allows exit from the c. "on parole" after having served a part of the penalty; c) "the conditional sentence", by which the individual may obtain the suspension of the effects of the sentence of condemnation.
It may be said that there exist two tendencies among the students of penal and penitentiary law, one for the afflictiveness of penalties and one on the concept of re-education. In the constitution of the Italian Republic the principle has been accepted that the penalty must also be re-educative; and therefore the penal codes and penitentiary regulations will have to be revised in that sense.
Currently in Italy there is in force an entire system based on the penal reform of 1930, which has the following characteristics: a) a body of norms suited to amending the condemned person, but without removing from the penalty its afflictive and intimidatory character; b) a certain specialization of the institutions in relation to the needs of prison life; c) organization of work with criteria of continuity and productivity.
Moreover, the patronage councils and the fines fund have been created, with the hope of seeing the amending work of the c. flanked by these two institutions and at the same time the work of assistance in the post-c.
Since a penitentiary reform must be made, codes and laws will have to be updated by the ever more pressing needs of social defense on the one hand and of the humanization of the c. on the other.
Even in modern nations the Church has always exerted itself so that it might be permitted to carry out religious assistance in the c. There is cited, for example, art. 28 of the Concordat of 20 July 1932 between the Holy See and the German Reich: «In hospitals, penitentiaries and other institutions maintained by public bodies, the Church shall be admitted to provide for the spiritual needs of souls and to perform religious functions». In France, in Italy, and in other countries the organizations that keep the chaplains of the c. in contact with one another have particular importance; and in Italy a general inspectorate of chaplains is about to be instituted for them at the Ministry of Justice. This will give an entirely new form to religious assistance in the institutions of prevention and punishment (this being the denomination of the Italian c.).
There are moreover many bodies and many associations that concern themselves with the moral or material assistance of prisoners (v. PENITENZIARIO).
Bibliography2 works
Celeste Bastianetto