Early release from a custodial sentence: An investigation in Italian prisons

CRS 2025 Presentation by Prof. Claudia Pecorella, Prof. Melissa Miedico and Prof. Massimiliano Dova (CRS2025_PID088)

Authors

Claudia Pecorella

Professor of Criminal Law, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy

Claudia Pecorella is professor of Criminal law at the Italian University of Milano-Bicocca, where she also teaches a class on Gender violence, for Law students. From 2018 she is director of a Master on Theoretical and practical profiles of the execution of prison sentences and security measures. Since many years she works as volunteer at the legal-help desk of the Italian prison of Milano-Bollate, which hosts men and women serving their sentences (there are around 120 women on a total number of 1400 inmates). To female detention, she dedicated an empirical research few years ago, through the analysis of sentences and educators’ reports concerning women hosted in the Bollate prison, as well as the interview of some of them (C. Pecorella, Donne in carcere. Una ricerca empirica tra le donne detenute nella II Casa di Reclusione di Milano-Bollate, in AAVV, Studi Dolcini, Giuffrè, 2018). After this experience she coordinated an investigation on female criminality, analyzing the caselaw of the Criminal Court of Milan (C. Pecorella (ed.), La criminalità femminile. Un'indagine empirica e interdisciplinare. Mimesis, 2020). In 2024 she realized in two female prisons of the town (Bollate and San Vittore) a project aimed at supporting women who had suffered violence during their life or who came from foreigner countries without supports and documents. The project, funded by a local public institution, involved professionals of the biggest anti-violence center of the town (CADMI), lawyers specialized in immigration law, and students of Law and Social Service in the University of Milano-Bicocca.

Prof. Melissa Miedico

Associate Professor in Criminal Law, Bocconi University, Italy

Melissa Miedico is an associate professor of criminal law at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, where she has taught – since 2001 - criminal law and is in charge of the legal clinics project (since 2019). She has worked extensively in the field of social justice and community engagement: she has dedicated her career to addressing the challenges of marginalized groups, focusing particularly on the intersection of crime and migration. Melissa Miedico initiated and coordinates the legal clinics project that provides support to people incarcerated in Milan's Bollate and San Vittore prisons. In addition to her advocacy work, she has participated in comparison meetings with other national and international experiences also with the aim of sharing best practices for addressing the needs of vulnerable populations. Some of his most recent contributions (in italian) have endeavored to promote change in the pursuit of social equity, among them are: - Extramural Interventions. Family assistance, Mimesis 2023; - Female crime and for-profit offenses, Mimesis, 2020; - Inequality and immigration, Giappichelli, 2022; - Pre-decisional suspensory-probationary measures, in Riv. it. dir. proc. pen. 2022; - Monetary punishment: in search of effectiveness, in Dir. pen. proc. 2023; - The migration phenomenon: a resource to be exploited, in Federalismi.it, 2019.

Massimiliano Dova

Professor, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy

Massimiliano Dova and Claudia Pecorella, professors of Criminal Law at the University of Milano-Bicocca (IT), have been working inside prison since many years, coordinating the Legal Help Desk and a Post-doc Course on penitentiary law. At academic level, they involve students in the legal assitance to prisoners through the extraordinary experience of legal clinic courses.

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