REPORTS ON THE EDUCATIONAL, MORAL AND RELIGIOUS PERFORMANCE OF PRISONERS IN POST-UNIFICATION ITALY. TRACES OF A PENITENTIARY PEDAGOGY IN THE PRISONS OF SIRACUSA AND MODICA

During the nineteenth century, the issue of the reform of the penitentiary system was placed at the center of the political agenda of European nations, with the aim of promoting a process of humanization of the prison sentence. The protagonist of this reform action was the new Kingdom of Italy, which renewed the practices of penitentiary treatment with a specific desire to assign an educational function to the prison sentence. In the belief that the fight against illiteracy, an inevitable companion of “corruption”, should also be promoted within the prison to return an improved individual to society, with the first General Regulations of Judicial Prisons, issued with the Royal Decree January 27, 1861, n. 4681, education was made compulsory for all prisoners. This research contribution examines the first annual reports on the progress of the school in the judicial prisons of Syracuse and in the correctional prisons of Modica of the second half of the 19th century, unpublished and rare archival documentary sources, from which it is possible to get information about the prison pedagogy in the early years of the Kingdom of Italy.