Tensioni e sfide biografiche del “corpo incarcerato”: significati e vissuti dell’esperienza reclusa

The article uses qualitative research performed in some prisons in Tuscany between 2018 and 2021 to explores how the dual punitive-rehabilitative mandate attributed to penitentiaries is still unfulfilled. Starting from the evidence that re-education is the main function requiring completion since it has been redefined as a discipline, the objective was twofold. Firstly, the impact of prison structure/organisation on internal interactions was investigated focusing on “devices for disciplining bodies” associated with the control of time and space, which reduce the disciplinary mandate to a logic of reward or punishment. Secondly, the biographical narratives of prisoners who had served penalties were collected to explore the processes of de-socialisation from previous life experiences and re-socialisation to the new “prison culture”, as well as the tensions/reactions in an interactive context where the condition of institutional asymmetry becomes ordinary and functional to the definition of penitentiary normality (and normativity).