Italy: Tested by New Religious Diversity – Religion in the Prison System

Abstract

As far as the Italian prison system is concerned, the public authorities have always considered the Catholic Church and its religious care providers as indispensable partners for implementing the rehabilitation programme, as established in Article 27 of the Constitution. It remains that in the last decades those authorities have substantially failed to reach this very goal, which is mainly because of their incapacity to make the Italian criminal justice system more efficient and reduce overcrowding in prisons, whose population, on the other hand, is increasingly changing, especially from a religious point of view. Thus, although almost nowhere in Italy do the life conditions in jail respect human dignity, the prison system currently consists of a modest team providing spiritual guidance for inmates belonging to confessions other than Catholicism. And, as the author tries to demonstrate in this chapter, this situation is not only in contrast with both the constitutional rights and the supranational legal principles (such as those referring to the European Convention of Human Rights and the European Union’s Treaties). It also makes Italy’s prisons potential breeding grounds for cultural conflicts and religious radicalism, the most illustrative examples of which are given by the questions related to the growing presence of Muslim inmates.