29. Justice, Prisons and Welfare in the Neoliberal Turn: Socioeconomic Reconfigurations, Cumulative Inequalities, and New Policy Challenges

Sessione 29

Justice, Prisons and Welfare in the Neoliberal Turn: Socioeconomic Reconfigurations, Cumulative Inequalities, and New Policy Challenges

Chairs: Rosalba Altopiedi (Università degli Studi di Torino), Massimo Campedelli (UP Umanapersone), Laura Cataldi (Università degli Studi di Salerno),  Erika Carlucci (Università di Pisa), Irene Psaroudakis (Università di Pisa), Matilde Zambon (Università di Pisa)

Corresponding Author: Laura Cataldi, Questo indirizzo email è protetto dagli spambots. È necessario abilitare JavaScript per vederlo.; Irene Psaroudakis – Questo indirizzo email è protetto dagli spambots. È necessario abilitare JavaScript per vederlo.

Descrizione

This session continues the reflection initiated at ESPAnet 2025 on justice and prisons as integral parts of the welfare system, as well as the debate on “counterintuitive and discriminatory welfare” developed in Politiche Sociali/Social Policies, 3/2025. The justice and prison system emerges as a microcosm of exclusion and multidimensional vulnerability, a mirror of broader socioeconomic transformations and the erosion of social rights. It constitutes a privileged observatory of social stratification and cumulative inequalities generated in the labor market, education, and access to protection networks, and is marked by the lack of structural strategies and standardized, top-down models of intervention.

From this perspective, justice and prison are not only institutions within the welfare domain shaping citizenship and producing inclusion and exclusion, but also powerful lenses through which to interpret contemporary transformations of the welfare state subjected to neoliberal colonization.

Key areas of inquiry include:

• the reconstruction and critical analysis of the broken links – of governance, policy, responsibility, and professionalism – between the justice–prison system and recognized welfare sectors;
• the contraction of welfare protection levels, particularly in its interaction with the penal and prison system and the precarization of inclusion pathways, with the risk of crystallizing disparities;
• the analysis of, and possible ways to counter, institutional violence enacted against subaltern individuals and “powerless groups” (Arendt, 1951);
• the spaces of action available to the Third Sector in fostering social reintegration through innovative practices oriented toward social justice, self-determination, and recovery of relationality.

Contributi:

Imprisoned Inequalities: The Structural Failure of Rehabilitation in the Italian Neoliberal Prison
Perla Arianna Allegri (Università di Torino)

La pena come processo relazionale. Corresponsabilità, comunità e i limiti strutturali della logica individualizzante nel sistema penale neoliberale.
Erika Carlucci (Università di Pisa)
Co-authors: Matilde Zambon (Università di Pisa)

Restricted Horizons: Sociological Notes on the Gendered Experience of Space among Female Detainees at the Juvenile Penal Institute of Rome
Federica Floridi (Università di Genova)
Co-authors: Silvia Cataldi (Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza)

La rieducazione tra workfare e prisonfare
Valeria Giavazzi (Università di Firenze e Univerisità di Torino)

Between Restorative Justice and Coercion An Exploratory Study on the Probation Measure for Adults in Italy
Serena Quarta (Università degli Studi di Salerno)
Co-authors: Laura Cataldi, Maria Carmela Catone, Nicola Montagna (Università degli Studi di Salerno)