A job for a new life. The second chance for those serving a sentence in prison also comes from a new job in the company, often secured by companies entering prisons to guarantee employment outside. The field of possibilities ranges from construction to agriculture, from carpentry to the bakery up to the call center and telecommunications. Work that is not only employed by the prison administration but also in real companies. Phenomenon, the latter, which in Italy ensures the salary of over two thousand prisoners but which in the future could double, at least in terms of figures. The data, in this regard, are eloquent.
The numbers of the phenomenon
Out of a total of 54,841 prisoners, there are a total of 18,654 workers (the figure is as at 30 June 2022). Of these, 16,181 are employed by the prison administration, while 2,471 workers are not employed by the administration. The general picture stops at December 31, 2021. And it speaks of a “parallel” world that counts, distributed in 26 categories, 247 activities carried out (110 of which are borne by the prison administration) which range from assembly and repair electronic components to the shoe shop, continuing with data entry and dematerialisation of documents, and then the carpentry shop to arrive at the wool and weaving mill with 333 employees.
A potential audience of 2,300 “ready” workers
According to an estimate by the Ministry of Justice, there are over 2,300 prisoners potentially ready for a new job outside prison. Outlining this scenario in which punishment is combined with work, the protocols signed in recent months by the prison administration. In June, for example, there was the turning point with the world of telecommunications that crossed the bars of prisons downstream of the Memorandum of Understanding of the Prison Work program signed by the then Minister of Justice Marta Cartabia and the then Minister of ‘Vittorio Colao technological innovation and in collaboration with telecommunications operators. Two paths have been followed in this area and nine companies have been employed. Specifically, these are Fastweb, Linkem, Tiscali, Sky, Telecom Italia, Vodafone and Windtre. The companies will carry out activities for the regeneration of network terminal equipment through dedicated laboratories inside prisons. Up to 200 people should be involved between the institutes of Lecce, Rome Rebibbia, Turin and Uta (Cagliari).
Adherence to “outside” activities
Then there is also the external activity, to which Open Fiber, Sielte and Sirti have joined for the construction of the access networks. This initiative provides that inmates can also work outside the prison, to carry out the laying and splicing of fiber optic networks. On this front, a total of 2,326 inmates with the potential personal and legal requisites able to work also outside were identified.
The first phase of the project will have an experimental nature on three institutes which will be able to train about 100 prisoners in six weeks. Precisely in this context, the Sirti group and Open Fiber recently defined the prison work program in the Rebibbia penitentiary facility and which on 14 December saw the official hiring of 7 prisoners. These are people who, after completing the training course, “will join the teams of Sirti and the Open Fiber Network Solutions (OFNS) consortium as operators for fiber optic splicing activities for network infrastructures in Italy” within the scope of the “Prison Work Programme” project. A participation which, as Ivan Rebernik, director of Personnel, Organization and Services of Open Fiber points out, “offers prisoners a new opportunity by enhancing the re-educational function of the sentence”.