CARCERE. – The Romans called carcer the place of custody for those condemned to death or to corporal punishment; and, both among them and among nearly all ancient peoples, the c. did not have the character of a punishment as a place of isolation and detention for a specified period. Above all, it served to ensure the presence of the accused at trial.
The c. were filthy places, where convicted persons or defendants, without distinction of sex or age, were shut up indiscriminately. After the advent of Christianity, greater consideration was shown to detainees.
Traces of more humane treatment of prisoners are found in the time of Constantine (320); but even in later periods the horror of dark and unhealthy dens, chains, and afflictions of every kind continued.
The concept that the c. should become a true place of expiation for a fixed period arose in subsequent centuries. Once certain forms of brutality, which were partly connected with the shortness of the period of detention, had been abandoned, increasing efforts were 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 influence, recommending, in various times and places, gentleness and mercy. Following the words of Jesus (Mt. 25:36), it included visiting prisoners among the works of mercy; and its millennial history is rich in documents testifying to its constant solicitude for those struck by human justice, instilling in their souls faith and hope in divine goodness and justice. The lives of very many saints contain heroic episodes of assistance to prisoners.
When, toward the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the detention system became more common, also because the turmoil of political events encouraged the sparing of human lives, often commuting capital punishment to harsh imprisonment, Pope Innocent X (Pamphili) had a large building constructed in Rome in 1647 to receive the prisoners transferred from the horrible prisons of Corte Savella, later razed to the ground, and of Torre di Nona. Construction was completed in 1655 under Alexander VII (Chigi). In that period there was a genuine revolution in the prison system and an entirely new type of construction as a detention house. It was called «C. Novo»; it had spacious, healthy, well-lit rooms and even latrines connected to a properly arranged sewer system.
The building currently houses the criminal museum and contains the following inscription, placed there at that time: «Iustitiae et clementiae - securiori ac meliori reorum custodiae - novum carcerem - Innocentius X Pont. Max. - posuit - Anno Domini - MDCLV».
From then on, attempts began in many places to give custodial punishment the possibility of finding in work a means of re-education, and in many countries the so-called forced labor was organized. C. for confinement arose in many European cities on the model of the «C. Novo». Yet the idea of that humanization of punishments which was to bring about such a profound transformation in the modern age was still far off, especially before the appearance of Cesare Beccaria’s book Dei delitti e delle pene. But the decisive contribution to winning the battle against the brutality of the c. was to be made by John Howard, born in Hackney in 1726, who laid down rules for nighttime segregation, work, and the sanitary conditions of the c. After him, a significant improvement took place, continuing into modern times, in which the concept of freedom was incorporated into the various systems of execution. It is said, especially in the American countries, that the c. should be a place that deprives the citizen of the freedom to move as he pleases, so that he may increasingly appreciate the value of freedom itself. According to those systems, the c. must not add to the punishment of deprivation of liberty other afflictions that debase a person or destroy him physically and morally. The director general of American prisons, Sanford Bates, expresses himself as follows: «The prison of tomorrow should at once be 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 alternatives to punishment, namely: a) probation, used especially in the United States of America, which permits the convicted person to live in society; b) parole, which is a form of supervised liberty and permits release from the c. «on parole» after part of the sentence has been served; c) «conditional conviction», whereby the individual may obtain suspension of the effects of the judgment of conviction.
It may be said that two tendencies exist among scholars of criminal and penitentiary law, one in favor of the punitive character of punishments and the other based on the concept of re-education. The Constitution of the Italian Republic accepted the principle that punishment must also be re-educational; consequently, the penal codes and penitentiary regulations will have to be revised accordingly.
At present, Italy has an entire system based on the penal reform of 1930, which has the following characteristics:
a) a set of rules designed to reform the convicted person, without removing from the punishment its punitive and deterrent character; b) a certain specialization of establishments in relation to the needs of prison life; c) organization of work according to criteria of continuity and productivity.
Patronage councils and a fines fund have also been established, in the hope that these two institutions may support the reformative work of the c. and, at the same time, provide assistance after release from the c.
Since a penitentiary reform is required, codes and laws will have to be brought up to date in response, on the one hand, to the increasingly urgent needs of social defense and, on the other, to the humanization of the c.
In modern nations as well, the Church has always worked to secure permission to provide religious assistance in the c. One example is art. 28 of the Concordat of 20 July 1932 between the Holy See and the German Reich: «In hospitals, penitentiaries, and other establishments maintained by public bodies, the Church shall be admitted to provide for the spiritual needs of souls and to perform religious functions». In France, Italy, and other countries, the organizations that maintain contact among the chaplains of the c. are of particular importance; and in Italy a general inspectorate of chaplains is about to be established for them within the Ministry of Justice. This will give an entirely new form to religious assistance in institutions of preventive detention and punishment (the designation given to Italian c.).
There are also many bodies and associations concerned with the moral or material assistance of prisoners (v. PENITENZIARIO).