Healing the Wounds for a Successful Reintegration: Women’s Narratives Inside Two Italian Prisons

WICC2025 Presentation by Claudia Pecorella PhD and Noemi Maria Cardinale PhD and Noemi Maria Cardinale PhD (WICC2025-PID098)

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.

Dr Noemi Maria Cardinale

Post-doc researcher in Criminal Law, University of Milano-Bicocca (IT), Italy

Noemi Cardinale is a post-doc researcher at the University of Milano-Bicocca; she teaches class on Computer criminal law, and she run a Lab on female detention for Social Service students. Since many years she cooperates with the legal-help desk of the Italian prison of Milano-Bollate; she took part in the investigation on women criminality (N. Cardinale, Omicidi al femminile: dalla violenza subita alla violenza agita, in C. Pecorella (ed.), La criminalità femminile, cit.) and most recently in the project developed in the female prisons of Bollate and San Vittore, aimed at helping women victims of violence.

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