Alle origini delle case di correzione. Indagine storico-educativa sulle pratiche di internamento in Italia e in Inghilterra

The present research investigates the history of the house of correction from an educational history perspective. More specifically, the study focuses on an analysis of the case of the Discolato of Bologna, making a comparison with other analogous institutions that came about in the two sample cities of Milan and Rome in an Italian context, and more broadly, examples of the house of correction in England in a more international context. The object of the research is focused on the relationship between deviance and internment, from a pedagogical perspective. To this end, this study aims to evidence not only the educational methods employed in these institutions but also the principles and goals that these educational methods aimed to foster and achieve. Furthermore, the present research analyses both the rules and regulations that formed the backbone of such corrective institutions, as well as the daily functioning and organization of imprisonment. In analysis of the correctional institution in Bologna, a wide range of documents from the Archivio Storico Provinciale di Bologna were consulted, thus enabling the operationalisation of a quantitative study of 1105 prisoners which gave invaluable insights into the principal demographic and social characteristics of the people interned in the Discolato. The interpretation of a variety of sources also facilitated the creation of a qualitative survey in an attempt to reconstruct the life stories of individual inmates. The present research paints a complex picture of the houses of correction. Over the course of centuries, and especially in the various realities examined in the study, they have taken on different characteristics and peculiarities. Their ineffectiveness was the main reason for their final closure, as it became increasingly evident that translating the theoretical prescriptions of regulations and statutes into practice was an extremely difficult task.