About us

The Documentation Centre L'altro diritto, established in 1996 at the Department of Theory and History of Law of Florence University, is actively engaged in theoretical reflection and sociological research in the fields of social marginality, deviance, prison and detention institutions, and makes the most relevant and accomplished results of this activity available to social operators and scholars through its Web site. The centre is a sponsor institution of the journal Dei delitti e delle pene, founded with Alessandro Baratta and published by ESI.

The Centre was born as a development of the teaching and research activity started, since academic year 1994-95, as part of the courses of Sociology of law held at the Department. The results of the field works of that course were gathered in 22 papers published in the volume (now out of print) edited by Emilio Santoro and Danilo Zolo, L'altro diritto. Emarginazione, devianza, carcere, Rome: La Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1997. Topics treated in the volume include: drug addiction, the condition of the homeless, life in gypsy camps, rape, the repressive practices of the police, the situation of adults and minors in prison, suicide in prison, the life of people confined in criminal asylums or assisted in rest homes, the experience of social co-operatives.

The materials collected in the section Ricerche are selected by the director of the centre (Emilio Santoro, Florence University) and the editorial board (whose members are Luca Bresciani, Pisa University, Luigi Ferrajoli, Rome University, Alessandro Margara, chairman of the Michelucci foundation, Claudio Sarzotti, Turin University, Gino Tapparelli, Salvador Bahia University, Brazil, Elena Urso, Florence University, and Danilo Zolo, Florence University).

Underlying the project there is, first of all, the idea that law courses lack a live contact with what Roscoe Pound called 'law in action', which he distinguished from and somewhat contrasted to 'law in books'. The latter consists of apparatuses of written norms claiming obedience: from the Constitution to codes, to the hundreds of thousands of acts of Parliament, executive regulations, ministerial directions, local norms, international rules. But besides this there is another law: it is the 'law in action', i.e. the tightly knit network of social transactions through which the principles and rules of law, combined with a variety of factors, effectively help discipline individual instances.

Today the relationship between these two aspects of legal experience is highly problematic. Indeed, the research of the Documentation Centre is meant to emphasise how the divorce between formally enacted law and the law as it is interpreted and enforced by the courts and administrative bodies - or spontaneously applied - is a phenomenon bound to expand and deepen in modern legal systems. There is increasing evidence that the normative practices actually regulating social experience are only minimally bound by the prescriptions of the formal legal system. It is only through long, conflicting and often concealed processes of normative re-interpretation, selection and distortion that state legislation comes to be effective discipline.

There is another reason for organising this Documentation Centre. The investigations being documented are directed to what we might call the 'dark side of the law' in post-industrial, welfare state governed societies. It is a dark side for a variety of reasons: because it is concealed within a highly differentiated social network, often governed by a strictly professional-bureaucratic expertise; because it is put on the fringes by processes of collective removal, as it is the case of the prison universe and other custodial institutions; or because it concerns new forms of social stratification which, in advanced industrial societies, have originated a real underclass. This is a sector of citizens and foreigners marginalised not only in wealth and private consumption, but also in ethnic and cultural terms. Thus they are de facto excluded from citizenship rights, especially social rights. These aspects of Italian society are generally not very 'TV-genic', except as ingredients of national soap operas. Thus they are removed from the political agenda and the attention of public opinion, as well as ignored by theoretical reflection.

Over the years, L'altro diritto has been organising several meetings with professionals or volunteers operating in the prison world and generally active in the places where the marginal components of contemporary societies are being confined, as well as a couple of workshops about specific issues each year, with the participation of operators and scholars from Italy and other countries. The most significant meetings include: "Prostitution: actuality and prospects", with the participation of Carla Corso, of the Committee for the protection of prostitutes' rights; Marida Bolognesi, president of the Committee for social affairs of the Italian House of Representatives, Don Luigi Benzi, of the community 'Papa Giovanni'; "Governing prisons: summary of an experience", meeting with Alessandro Margara; "Governing prisons: experiences in comparison", with the participation of Ettore Ziccone, PRAP of Tuscany, Cosimo Giordano, director of the prison of Sollicciano, Maria Grazia Grazioso, director of the prison 'Mario Gozzini', Vittorio Cerri, director of the prison of Pisa, Paolo Basco, director of the prison of Arezzo, Pierpaolo D'Andria, director of the prison of Porto Azzurro, Carlo Mazzerbo, director of the prison of Gorgona, Margherita Michelini, director of the prison of Empoli, Ione Toccafondi, director of the prison of Prato; "Juvenile criminal mediation", with interventions by Adolfo Ceretti, University of Milan, Giovanni Ghibaudi, mediation bureau of Turin, Daniela Lastri, delegate for education, city of Florence, Jacqueline Morineau, Centre de médiation et de formation à la médiation, Giovanni Passaleva, delegate for the family and social policy, region of Tuscany, Piero Tony, chief of the juvenile tribunal of Florence court of appeal, Laura Volpini, University of Rome; "Expulsion as an alternative measure", with interventions by Desi Bruno (Democratic jurists), Paolo De Felice (general procuratorate), Giovanni Flora (Florence University), Alessandro Margara (Michelucci foundation), Raffaele Miraglia (Democratic jurists), Massimo Niro (Tribunal for the enforcement of sentences); Eriberto Rosso (Florence bar), Vincenzo Sapere (Tribunal for the enforcement of sentences), Guido Savio (ASGI), Lorenzo Trucco (ASGI).

The Documentation Centre is not interested in the Italian reality only; we started hosting contributions in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, about the situation of prisons, detention centres etc. - including the issue of torture - in Latin America. We plan to open a section on the tragic situation of Turkish prisons and the issue of Kurds.

After a first stage, totally devoted to documentation and research, in 1997 an Extrajudicial Counselling Service has been set up within L'altro diritto. The major need this structure is trying to meet is to secure the effectiveness and equality of the (few) rights of convict citizens. While this is the minimal condition of prison life, it is often lacking for the weaker sector of prison population. For our own research and other evidence show that there emerge some really 'alternative' prison circuits, longer, harder and with fewer opportunities for re-socialisation. These circuits are entered chiefly by convicted immigrants who, owing to difficult communication and an often short term, hardly ever come in touch with prison operators or can contact their trial counsel (often appointed by court).

The extrajudicial counselling service is active in the prisons of Sollicciano, where 6 volunteers go every Saturday all day, Prato (La Dogaia) where 2 volunteers go every Saturday half a day, Solliccianino (detention centre 'Mario Gozzini' in Florence) where 2 volunteers go every second Saturday half a day, and Empoli, where 2 volunteers go every second Friday half a day.

Thus the main goal of the extrajudicial counselling service is to inform convicts of their rights and possibly to help them use these rights whenever legal counsel is not needed. The prison law and the benefits it provides for, aimed at furthering the re-socialisation of convicts, presuppose an action by the convict or her lawyer, and such an action becomes difficult if one lacks trusted legal counsel while serving one's term or if, for any reason, one does not know the rules of the prison law or their conditions of application, or if one simply lacks the material, cognitive and human resources required by the path to re-socialisation.

Starting with these considerations the activity of the volunteers of L'altro diritto has soon gone beyond sheer legal aid, to embrace all those actions capable of facilitating the actual use of their rights by convicts (contacts with social co-operatives, Communities and SERT, accompanying convicts on leave or assigned to therapeutic communities, etc.). In particular L'altro diritto has been dealing with the problem of the education of prisoners. Thus it is positively contributing to the creation and operation of university courses in the prison of Prato. In particular, our activity has been aimed at promoting foreign convicts' access to the university and we have been trying to solve their problems with finding their high school qualifications in their home countries and having them translated. The centre has been trying to support undergraduate convicts who are not detained in the prison of Prato or are serving a non-custodial sentence. Relating to these activities L'altro diritto has made an agreement with the university board and the Cassa di Risparmio bank of Prato, which provides small grants, in order to manage a tutoring service in the prison section of Florence University.

Moreover, the centre is trying to activate, together with other voluntary teachers, high school courses in the prisons where it is present.

As to the social aspect, in the Sollicciano and Mario Gozzini prisons and for convicts serving a non-custodial sentenceL'altro diritto activated a desk office to prepare the necessary documentation for accessing the social benefits convicts are entitled to (pensions, unemployment benefits, as well as residence and, specifically for migrants, issues with residence permit and work). The desk office is open 2 hours 5 days a week in the Sollicciano prison. In the other prisons social support is provided together with legal counsel.

As part of the social support project we created "Panglos", a type B social co-operative where our members carry out all administrative activity qua voluntary associates, in order to allow convicts to work in prison. Panglos has been recognise by the Prato city council as a privileged contractor, which means that the municipality must prefer Panglos when requesting its kind of services. By now it has made a remote work contract involving about ten convicts of the prison's university section (the only ones with network access). We plan to extend the co-operative's activity to other prisons (starting with the Juvenile Detention Centre) as well as in other areas, such as a production in the gypsy camp of Masini in Florence in order to allow at least part of women there to work.

Since 1998 the Centre has activated a support group for minors confined in the Juvenile Detention Centre of Florence, particularly for those coming from non-EU countries who account for 90% of inmates. The group, operating in the Detention Centre every Wednesday in the afternoon, is meant to try and establish an interaction with non-EU boys based on straightforwardness and trust, so as to facilitate their access to the alternative measures to detention from which, because of their 'rootless' condition, they are de facto excluded. L'altro diritto keeps in touch with the boys even after they go out of prison, trying to favour their re-socialisation. In particular, together with the Ulisse co-operative which manages a recreation area in the S. Salvi neighbourhood, Florence, we are trying to help minors with a criminal experience, or foreign minors without family references in the city, so that they can meet and organise their own space knowing that there are operator who can help them out for all their social insertion problems.

Since inmates can hardly perform any activity within the Juvenile Detention Centre, out of financial problems, on a completely voluntary basis L'altro dirittoactivated courses of yoga, kick boxing, computer training and an inter-cultural laboratory in the hope that minor convicts coming from different cultures can start a dialogue about their own experiences.

Volunteers of L'altro diritto also started the application procedure for minor convicts to access the labour related facilitations provided for by the law. As of April 2004 we are having the first minor convict work outside, according to the provisions of the penitentiary law. The procedure took very long because the Ministry of Justice had never thought of applying these legal facilitations to minors. If the experience is successful it will be possible, possibly through the Panglos co-operative, to install productions within the detention centre itself. The project is ready and has been agreed upon by the centre's staff.

With respect to juvenile detention again, L'altro diritto made an agreement with the Tuscany region, the Juvenile Tribunal of Florence and Coeso in order to start a desk office of juvenile criminal mediation at the Juvenile Tribunal of Florence. The first training course for mediators should begin in September 2004. In the meantime L'altro diritto has been working together with the Faculty of Educational Sciences of Florence University to activate a professional course on "Operator of criminal and social mediation" for the degree in "Peace operators". The course began in March 2004. On the basis of an agreement with the Office for Juvenile Justice L'altro diritto is taking care of 5 boys attending 250 hours of stages in social mediation within the Juvenile Detention Centre - where relations among different cultural groups are often quite troublesome - and 3 boys attending a 250 hours' stage at the experimental mediation centre activated by L'altro diritto with the justices of the peace in Florence.

Over the years dealing with the disadvantaged has meant more and more dealing with migrants. Little by little L'altro diritto started many projects specifically aimed at supporting migrant convicts. When the Bossi-Fini bill made it clear that the government had chosen to manage the migration phenomenon by criminalising migrants, the centre began extending its focus outside of detention centres. Since 2000 the Centre has been campaigning to promote an awareness that after the Bossi-Fini act local administrations and the components of civil societies more responsive to solidarity issues should be constantly committed to providing support, even legal, to foreign citizens, particularly with respect to problems of entrance, residence, expulsion, political asylum, etc. As part of this activity we started co-operating with the Council on Immigration of the Tuscan section of the Association of Italian Municipalities. In September 2003 this led to the creation of Adirmigranti. Centro di informazione giuridica sull'immigrazione, located in Prato and meant to provide legal counsel to local foreigners' offices. At the regional level Adirmigranti undertakes to perform a co-ordinating function and to publicise migrants-related laws (statutes, administrative regulations, case law) as well as 'good practices' of managing services and dealing with troublesome issues, in order to secure the effectiveness of migrants' rights and to help local agencies and associations in solving the puzzle of statutes and regulations in the Italian immigration law, given the confused strictness of the Bossi-Fini modifications.

As to migrant convicts, we made an agreement about counselling with the Tuscan office of the prison administration. The agreements provides that volunteers in various prison can give counsel to both prison staff, on the issues related to migrant convicts, and to migrant convicts themselves about their rights and the access to them. As a consequence of this agreement the counselling activity was extended to the prisons of Pisa, Livorno, Lucca, Massa, Grosseto, Siena, S. Gimignano and Pistoia. There we are exclusively concerned with migrants. In the same prisons we also counsel migrants serving non-custodial sentences and the operators in charge of them.