Steps towards an exclusive democracy: the new use of prison

In this essay I will argue that the current situation of Italian prisons (and, more generally, those in north-western countries) and the criminal policies that produced it, are the result of the transformation of democratic societies from inclusive societies, that is, characterized by the progressive «giving of economic and social power to the powerless», in the words of Du Bois, to exclusionary societies, characterized by the progressive marginalization of large groups of individuals, primarily migrants. Una versione in italiano di questo saggio è apparsa con il titolo“Il carcere strumento della democrazia escludente” in S. Simonetta, Utopia e carcere, Editoriale Scientifica, Napoli, 2015