Alfredo M. Bonanno

Locked Up

Elephant Editions.
Alfredo M. Bonanno

Locked Up

Elephant Editions
Original title: Chiuso a chiave
PREFACE

Prison has come out of the shadows into the limelight as not
a day passes without some allusion 10 *solving the problem” o the
State’s overflowing dungeons. Advances in surveillance technology
are offering alternative models of isolation and control that could
see a large number of the latters’ potentially explosive inmates
defused and—opportunely tagged or microchipped—dispatched
10 the urban ghettos of capital from whence they came. The main
obstacle, bolstered by some retrograde attempis to gain votes
through a sworn intractibility concerning the “enemy within’, is

power's need for mass consensus from those it had led to believe
that the State’s protection racket and promise of long custodial
sentences were the ultimate social guarantee. The dilema has given
space 10 a whole range of social cops in an ongoing battle that
the sycophantic media have not missed the opportunity to
illuminate. The occult world of prison never fails to provide good
headlines for those in search of a frisson, ‘enlightened discussion”
or fodder for animated pub talk, the latter ofien concluding with
a call for the reinstatement of the death penalry.

In actual fact,we are witnessing the labour pains of a
transitional period concerning the whole question of sanctions
and punishment in accordance with the requirements of post-
industrial capital. The reality of enclosure, of being locked up in
reinforced strongboxes for de
with the prevailing model of social democracy, which would prefer
the perfect world of identity and participation also for those who
accept punishment as their rightful due.

years, decades, is truly in contrast

3
And 50 once again, following the feminist issue, the work
issue (flexitime, mobility), ecology etc. we have come 10 the point
where the ever-adjusting requirements of power meet the
solicitations of the concerned left of the left along with obsolete
Stalinists and renegade revolutionaries, head on. Abolish prison!
has become the slogan of the moment where a whole anti-prison
culture has emerged in myriads of tomes on prison conditions,
and eamest accountancies delineating crimes and alternative
Jorms of retribution worthy of the Holy Fathers of the Inuisition.

Separation is the essence of politics, and by isolating prison
Jrom the State and capital as a whole, the harbingers of social
surgery can find allies across the whole societal spectrum from
priests o social workers, university professors 10 ex-cons. There
is an answer for everything in the fantasy world of alternatives,
every bad coin has its flip side.

But the totality of prison is is not simply a place, it is also a
condition the antihesis of which i freedom. By the same token,
the absence of freedom is prison, and only when the latter is
perceived as one’s own condition does it become possible o enter
the destructive dimension, without measure. The viscid altruism
that dams up the free-flowing energy of revolt disappears when
disgust for the prison institution and its putrid essence reaches
the invisible shackles that bind us all, turning empathy into
projectuality. Prison is not a domain reserved for ‘specialists”
such as those who have done time themselves or have a particular
rapport with individual prisoners, it is the underlying reality of
everyday life, each and every discourse of capital taken 1o its

logical conclusion.
The words that follow were spoken by a comrade in struggle,
astruggle where prison has always been present in is stark reality
and an essential objective in the extensive destruction that
“storming the heavens' implies. Linle did he know s he wrote the
introduction to the Italian publication of the transcription from
Rebibbia prison in 1997, that a six-year sentence awaited him as
the outcome of the infamous “Marini trial’. It should not go unsaid
that, after months of being displayed for public slaughter as head
of an inexistant armed gang, three of these years were for a crime
of opinion, ‘subversive propaganda’, the other three for “con-
course in robbery’on the accusation of Marini’s penitent terrorist”
But that is not what we want 10 talk about here: neither victim nor
political prisoner; what follows are not the prison memoirs of
Alfredo Bonanno, but a contribution by a comrade among
comrades 10 a struggle that will continue until all prisons are
destroyed, till not one stone of them is left standing.

As we said, the text that follows is the transcription of a
meeting in Bologna, and s such its monochrome pages cannot
render tonal nuances, timing, intensity, or laughter. The tools of
the writer are cast aside in favour of the irrepeatable moment,
the unique encounter of heart and mind that occurs when comrades
mee face 1o face.

The talk begins with a warning not 1o expect any of the
specialist information concerning prison that is 5o much in vogue,
and contains personal impressions and anecdotes that illuminate
some of the absurdity of Iife behind bars as well as traces the
various tendencies in the evolution of punishment and attitudes
10 the latter by certain elements of the once revolutionary move-
ment in ltaly.
Everything is linked by one guiding thread: the impelling
need 1o destroy all prisons along with the rest of the structures of
capital,

Nothing less will do. W
INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Prison i the mainstay ofthe present society. Often it does not seem
0. but it s

Our permissive, educative society allows itself to be guided by
enlightened politcians and i against any recourse o stzong measures. It
Tooks on scandalised a the massacres dotted al over the world map, and
scems 0 be composed of so many respectable citizens whose only concerns
arerespecting nature and paying asltletax as possble, Thissociety. which
considerstslfo be far beyond barbarity and horror, has prison on s very.
doorstp.

Now. the mere existence of place where men and women ae held
locked upin opportunely equipped iron cages. watched over by other men
and women wielding bunches of keys.a lace where human beings spend
years and years o their lves doing nothing, absolutely nothing. s sign of
the tmost disgrace, no ust for this society butfora whole historical ra.

Lam writin this ntroduction in Rebibbia prison and 1 don't fel like
changing a word of the talk that I gave in Bologna a few years ago. If
compare the thickheadedness of the prison institution today with that of
my experiences recounted inthe text published below: I see that nothing
haschanged.

Nothing could change. Prison i a sore that society ries (0 in vain
conceal.Like the doctors inthe seventeenth century who treated the plague
by puttng ointment on the sores but left rats unning around among the

rubbish, toda

. at every level of the prison hierarchy technicians are rying

10 cover up this o that horrible aspect of prison, not realising that the only

way to fiace the later is to destroy it. We must destroy all prisons and leave

7
notone stone standing. not keep a few around in oder to remermber them
i the way that humanity has done with other constructions that ety to
the mostatrocious infamy.

Now someone who tends o beat about the bush willak: howwcan e
destroy prison? How can we getrid of it completely in a society like this,
Where abunch of bosses calledthe State decide foreverybody and impose

these decisions by force?

So.the bestof these squaswkers, the quick witted with hearts o gold,
try to mitigate prisoners’suffeing by giving them cinema once a week,
coloured TV, almost dible food, weekly visits, some hope of being eleased
before the end of thei sentence and everything ele. Of cours, these good
people want something in exchange. After all that's ot asking too much.
They want prisonerst behave and show respect o the warders, acquie the

apacity toresist years and years of nsetivity and sexual abstinence, undergo

psychological treatment by specialised personnel and declare, morc or less
openly. tha they have been redeemed and are capable of retuning to the
societythat expelled them for misbehaving.

Ihave been a frequenter of prisons for more than a quarter of a century:
50 can compare a few things. Once prisoners literally lived in an infamous
disgusting hole visited by ats and various other creatures. They only savw
thelight of day fora few minutes, did not have TV and could noteven make.
a.cup of coffe in their cell. The situation has certainly improved today.
Prisoners in ltaly] can actually make mels, even cakes, n the cell. They
have more hours’ recreation in day than they used o get in a month, and

can have extra

its and make a few phone calls o the family. They can
work for adecent wage (half the average wage outside). watch colour TV,
havea fridge, a shower and everything cls.

Of course prisoners accept these improvements, they're not stupid.

And why not. They also accept paying the price, by showing themselves to

5
be good and condescending, arguing wih the guards as lite as possible
and telling stories o the educators and psychologists who hang sround the
corridors like shadows, waiting for it to be ime o go home and fo the end
of the month to pick up their salry. Apart from the obvious consedquence
of lowering the level ofthe clash in prisons, nobody in this scenario really
believes that the prisoner will bere-insered into so-called civil socity. It
is farce that each player recites magnifcently.

Lt take thepries for example. fheisn' stupid h knows perfectly
‘wellthat allthe prisoners who g0 to mass g0 to meet prisoners from other
‘wings whom they wouldstotherwise se. He accepts that with the ypocrisy
of his trade and gets on wih it Of course, now and again some prisoner
willshow a sudden fait, enlightenmenton th road to Damascus But his,
the prist knows perfectly well is functional 1o the treatment for geting
ot on parole r having a suspended sentence oranother of the many benefits
provided for by the law but subordinate to the approval of the custodial
personnel, educators, psychologists and also the prist

What was clear when one was face t face with the police becomes
hazy inside. Today nearly al prisoners re losing thir identity a such and
are accepting permissive changes that are gradually rapping them within
mechanism that promises not so much to edeem them as o letthem out a
Vitle before the end of thei tme.

As the attentve reader of this ltle book wil see thre i a lne of
reasoning tha claims o want to ‘abolish” prison. Now to abolish means to
ablate, e climinate, an essenial component from society: Leaving things
asthey are this aboliton would be impossible or if it were to come sbout,
it would tum out o be i the interess of pover.

Letsry o gointo this. The only way to do something serious about
prison i to destroy it. That is no more absurd or wopian than the thesis

that wants 1o abolishit. In both cases the State,for which prison s essential,

9
would have recourse o extreme measures. But specific conditions of &
revolutionary charactercould make the destruction of prison possibl. They
couldthe create social and poitcal upheaval that would make this utopia
come true, due tothe sudden absence of the power required for prison to
coninue o exis

Inthe case of aboliton. if it were to happen progressivly it would
mean that the State was providing for prison in a different way. In fact,

something of the sort is actually happening. As T will show, prisons are

opening up. Political forces that were once quite cut off from them now
enterthem regularly. Thereareal kinds ofcultural manifestations, cincma,
theatre, painting, poetry: all these sectors ar hrd at work. This opening
also requirs the prisoners” participation. At frst, participation seems to

eliminate disparity. allowing everyone to be equal: it means that people

don'thave to stay locked up in cells all day and gives them the possibility

0 talk and make their demands heard. And this s true, in that the “new’

prison hastaken theplace of the ‘old’. But not all prisoners are prepared to
participate. Some stil have their dignity s ‘outlaws', which they don't
want o lose, so they refuse

1am not proposing the old distnction here between “politcal” and
“common lav” prisoners which has never really convinced me. Personally
have always refused—and continue 1o do so now in the prison where I am
writing this introduction —the label of ‘political’prisoner. Lam eferring to
the ‘outlaws' those whose lives have been entirly dedicated o lving against
and beyond the conditons established by law: It s clear that if o the one.

hand prison is opening up o prisoners who are prepared to part

cipate.itis
closing down on those who are not and want to remain ‘outlaws’, even in
prison.

Given the advances in control in society, the great potential of

information technology in this field and the centralisation of the security

0
services and the poice,at least a th European level, we can wellimagine
that those going against the law in the not too distant future realy will
have the bsolute determination of the outla.

We can sum up by saying tha the projectof power for the futureis to
abolish the traditional prison and open it up to partiipation, and at the
same ime crate a new,absolutelyclosed version: a prison with while coats

where the real outlaws will end their days. Thi

the prison of the future
and those who are talking sbout abolition will be happy. in thal in the
future these prisons with white coats might ot even be called by such a
hateful name, but rather clinics for mental patients. Isn't someone who
insiss on rebelling and afirming ther dentity as an ‘outlaw” in defiance
of all propositins to participate in society. sbsolutly mad? And do mad
people perhaps not constitute a medical atherthan penitentiary problem?

Such society having a greatercapacity for socialand poliical conrol.
would cal for everyone t collaborate in this repressive project, so would
haveless need o have recourse tosentencing. The very conceptof setencing
would be putin question. Basically most of the prison population today
are people who have committed ‘crimes” such s taking drugs drug dealing.
petty theft, admiistrative offences, ec.. which from one moment o the
next might no longer be considered such. By removing these people from
prison andreducing the probbilty of more srious offences such as robbery
and kidnapping through increased levels of social control, few actual real
crimes il remain, Crimes of passion could very wellbe deal with through
recourse tohouse arest, and thatis theintention. Ands0, who would remain
in prison under such conditions? The few thousand individuals who refuse
10 accept this project, who hate such a choice and refuse to obey or put
themselves down. In a word, conscious rebels who continue 1o atack,
perhaps againstalllogic, and against whom it will be possible o apply

specific conditions of detention and ‘cure” closer to that of an asylum than

i
an actual prison. Thatis where the logical premise of prison aboliton leads
usinthelast analysis, The State could very wellespouse this thesis at some.
time in the not oo distant future

Prison i the most diret, brutal expression of power, and like power
it must be destroyed, it cannot be abolished progressively. Anyone who
hinks they can improve it now in order to destry it in the future will
forever be a captive of i,

“The revolutionary project of anarchist i o struggle long with the

exploited and push them to rebel against all abuse and repression, 5o also

against prison. What moves them isthe desie for a bettr world. a btter
i ithdigniy and tbic, where economy and politis have been detroyed.
There can be no place for prison i that world

“Thatis why anarchists scare pover.

Thatis why they are locked up i prison.

Alfredo M. Bonanno
Rebibbia prison, 20 March 1997.
Locked Up

Voici le temps des Assassins
Rimbaud

“The prison queston s something that anarchists and the revolutionary
movementin general have been involved i foralong time. We come back
it periodically because for many of us it is something that touches us
direcly, ortouches comrades close to s, whom we loe.

“To know what prison s like and why it exists and functions,or how
it might cease o exist, or function bettr according 1o one’s pointof view,
is o doubl a very intresting subject. I have heard many tlks,conferences
and debates inthe past, particularly about en years ago. At that time reality
was seen analytically due toacertain marxism that was boss ofthe poliical
scene both culturally and practcally. and the main aspect of the debate on
prison was the “professionalism’ with which it was carred on.

One was usually listening to, or imagined one was listening (o,
someone who knew something sbout prison. Wel, tha' not th case here.
I fact 1 don't know al that much hout prison. 'm not aware of knowing
much about prison and I'm certainly not specialist on the subject, and
even less someone who hassuffered all that much, .. bit, ys. So. if that
is the way you seethings. mean from a kind of rofessional pointof view.
don't expect much from this talk. No professionalism, no specific
competence. I hould sayright away that I feela kind of repulsion, a sense.
of profound disgust for people who present themselves on a partcular
subject and split reality up into sectors declaring, 1 know all bout this

subject,now I'llshow you.' | don't have that competence.

5
Ihave had my misfortunes of course,in the sense that | first went to
prison over twenty years ago and, i fact, when I found myselflocked up in
acellfor the first time I found myself in great iffculty. The frst thing |
wanted to do was destroy the radio, because it was a very loud ransmission
andafiera few minutes locked upinthere | el as though 1 was going mad.
1 took offa shoe and tried to smash the object that was making such an
abscene din. The nose was coming from an armoured bos screwed into the
celing next to a light bulb that was constantly It Aftr a few minutes, a
head appeared at the peephole of the armoured door and sad, ‘Excuse me,
what are you doing?” I answered, ‘I'm trying to ... “-No, that's not
necessary, all you have t do s call me, I'm the cleancr, so L switch offthe
radio from outside and everything's okay.” At that moment I iscovered

what prison was, and i

There, that sums up my specific culture on the
subject of prison. Prison is something that destrays you, that scems
absolutely unbearable, —how on earth will I be able to survive i here
with this thing drving me crazy’...snap. itle gesture, and is over. This
s my professionalism on prison. And it is also a lite personal story.
concerning my imprisonment

‘There have heen many studies about prison of course, but 1 know
Jitle shout them. Bear n mind thatthese studies have notonly been carried
out by specialiss of the sociology of deviance. but even by prisoners
themselves, and funded by the Ministry. One such study concerns Bergamo
prison. L saw it and found incredibl stuffin i, amazing graphics, massive
tatistcal explanations about the prison population there over a period of
three years. 1 think it was. However, these studies are completely usless,
they are not serious materialthat could rally be presented to the people
who actually make decisions. In my opinion one shouldn't overestimate
scientifcinstruments and thir capacitcs. especially i this field. The social

sciences are not precise sciences that make it possible to speak of scientific

u
research. There are many instruments, but they are practcally useless. The
mathematical instruments we have at our disposal are constantly being

devalued, we are now aware that they prove absolutely nothing. It i

impossible o come to any conclusion. You can'tsay.as you can with mice,
“given that there are x number of people i prison lt's sce what happens'.
s notsosimple. People are ot mice,fortnately: And morcover the science
that studies people, sociology. is for the main part a lot of codswallop
Fortunately.

But what are the various theoretical positions concerning prison? I
ik we could say there are many. but they all leave a It o be desired.
Generallyspeaking, I'm notparicularly iterested n them. There ar the
various disquisitionsof the philosophers. and thee i the chater of the so-
calld specaliss. One ortwo theoreical positons borea it more weight,
ahoutsay twenty years ago. One historicaltheory links prison 0. particular
view of the evolution of capitalist forms of production. Here we see a
patched-up reconstruction that goes like this: the old prison corresponded
topre-capitalistorpre-mercaniile producton, then there was the mercantile
prison, the capitalistprison,the imperialst prison... well,all rubbish in
my opinion! And I don't car i i’s possible (o talk shout a post-industral
prison today: It scems stupid to me, but there ae actually people with the
desire and capacity o do s0, who even manage o sel this nonsense off a5
something interesting. To me this theoretical posing is nothing but
sociological gymnastics.

“The main supporters of prison, without actully ealising or desiring
it are the prisoners themselves. Justlike the worker who sces himself in
the dimension of the factory,if he i a factory worker, or i any case i the
chains that hold him down. As Malatesta said, being accustomed to the
chains we don'trelise that we are able to walk, not thanks to them but in

spiteof them, because there is something thatis unclear. Offen, when talking

15
0 a prisoner who has done twenty, even thirty years' prison, he will tell
you about all the woes of prison life etc. of course, but you also realise

that he has a love-hate relationship with the institution, because ba

ithas become his life, And thatis part of the problem. So you realise that
you cannot work out a critque of prison by stating off from the ideas and
experiences that come out of it because the experience i cerainly negative
and full of repulsion and hatred of the place, but it i always ambivalent,
like all experiences of life. 1 have ived this myself and | can't explain howw
Ifeltit growing inside me. Human beings ar not automata, they don'tsec
things in black and white. Well it happens that the instant you get out of
prison you have the sensation that you ae leaving something dear to you
Why? Because you know that you are leaving part of your ife inside,
because you spent some o your lif there which, evenifit was under errible
conditions.is still part of you. And evenif you lived it badly and suffered
horribly, which i not ahvays the case, it i always beter than the nothing
that your life is reduced to the moment it disappears. So. even pain, any
pai
can'texplain it but we know it prisoners know i, So they are preciscly the

better than nothing. Itis always something positive, perhaps we

first 10 support prison

“Then ther is common sense, this massive stumbling block, that cannot
see how it would be possible o do without prison. I fact, this common
sense pushes proposals or the abolition of prison upa lind alley. shovwing
them to be ridiculous because such proposals want to have their cake and
eatit, whereas it would be far easier 1o simply say. “prison is necessary in
thepresent tate of affars'. How can I putthe jewelle'srght o safeguard
hisproperty before my right o take his jewels at gunpoint | who have no
money and nothing to cat? The two things are a contradiction. How can |
overcome thiscontradiction by puting it at the level ofa universal contract

o a natural right desired by God, the Devil, Reason or Kropotkinian

16
animism? The only way to look a the problem i the elementary onc:ifall.
‘zoes well, I take the money, i it does'c I do m time. have spoken (0
many robbers and one of the first | met sad to me, “Listen, you who can
read and write, take a piece of paper anddo the sums. How much cancam
inthreeyears working in factory? (A the time thefactory wage was bout
15 millon old lre] a month). And. he continued, ‘I 1 do a obbery and it
‘zoes wellLtake more than 15 millon: 20, maybe 30.Ifthings go wrong |
dothree years and I'm back where started. Morcover, if it does go wrong,
T'm not working under boss who drives me cray for hree years, orin
Germany. slecping in Portacabins. I'm injail and at least 'm respected

here. I'm a bank robber and when I go out into the yard I'm seen as @

serious person, not a poor sod that lives from his labour. Frankly, with all

my science, I was at aloss for words. What he said didn't sound wrong to
me, even at the level of basic economics. And what could I say? ‘B, you
Know you can't ouch property. He'd have spatin my face! Or ‘The scales
are wrong. you mus se them right, but then for him they had tipped the
scales once and fo all.As Fichte, who knew something about philosoph.
or atleast he thought so, said. “Whoever has been defrauded of whatis due
o him on the basis of the social contract has the right to go and take it
back.” And he who said that was cerainly not a revolutionary or even
progressive.

‘Common sense prevents usfrom imagining society without prison It
does wellin my opinion, because common sense cannol always be ignored.
and a society under the present conditions of roduction, with the xisting

cultural and politcal relations, cannot do without pri

. To imagine the
elimination of prison from the present socal context i a fine wopia good
only forfilling up the pages of books by those who work n the universi
and writein the pay of the State.

“The rest, inmy opinion. i an absolute waste oftime,at east or those
who understand anything at all. It might be that 1 didn't quite get these
texts about bolishing prison. Yet 1 scem o have noticed that some of the
people who supportaboliton, whom 1 actually know,are the same as those.

whoonce called themselves, 'm ot saying Stalinis

. butatleastsupporters
of the chater of historcal materialism on prison. e. they supported the
analyses of prison as a eality that s strictly linked to production. These.
same people ar forthe abolition of prison today because the current deas
are no longer Stalinist or authoritarian but are of an anarchistor at least
libertarian nature. Apart from these people’s extraordinary capacity for
poliical evolution, which never ceases to amaze me. | insst that, in any
case,concepts such a abolition are st stupid,even i they call themselves.
anarchist. And why not? Can anarchists not talk rubbish? There's nothing
strange aboutthat There's noequation tht says anarchist equas ntelligent;

‘anarchists are ot ne

ssarily intlligent in my opinion. I know many stupid
anarchists. And v encountered many inelligent cops. What's wrong with
that? I've never seen anything strange about that.

Yes, the concept doesn't seem difficult because abolition, —at least

asfaras Lcansee,but prhaps | did't quit get it and we are heretoclarify
ourideas-—the aboliion of partof something. is an sblation I oher words,
Itake a part and cut it out. Society. of which prison is a indispensable
component oday. should thereforetake prison and get rid of it ke you do
with a rotten piece of something. You cut it out and throw it the dustbin
“Thatis the concept o abolition. Abolish prison and put some other kind of

social orga

aton in s place. In order not 1o be prison in all but name,
it must not foresee sanctions or the application of a sentence, law, the
principl of coercion, etc. What they possibly don't want to sec i the fact
that abolition of prison implis the upturning of the sitation that is

juridically created between the victim and the perpetrator of the crime, the

15
so-called guily party. Today. a separation is between the victim and the
guilty one is caried out, and with prison this separation becomes clear
Victim and guilty party must never meet again, in fact they will forever
avoideach other. il cetainly never £0 10 Bergamo o ook fo the jeweller
whose shop I robbed. He would callthe policeas soon a he saw e, ther's
o doub about that

What happens i the case of abolition? The two protagonists of the
“illegal” deed are not kept apart on the contrary they are put in contact
through negoliation. For example, they etablish what the damages amount
1o together and instead of going to prison the person responsible for the
“illegal”decd pledges o repay the damage. in money or through work. For
exampl, it scems thatthereare people who are happy o have the houses.
painted. 1 don't know. that sortof thing. In my opinion, these absurditis
start off from a philosophical principle that is quite different 1o that

aged by the law.
The separation of the ‘guily party’ from the *ictm’ also depends on
the specificsituation, exceptin cases wherethis was caused by passion or
uncontrllable emotions. I most ases, notonly does the guilty one try to
escape to save the booty or his skin, he also ties (o have as ltle contact
with the vietim as possible. Then there s the other aspect of separaton,
that whi

s institutionalised by the intervenion of the judge, the lawyer,
the cour, the prison. o, notonly separation from the victim but also from
society. with the aftermath of the paticula atention paid o re-cniry into
society.Inonder toavoid 100 rusque acontact there are ofen precse police
practices: youleaveprison, the police patrol picks you up immediatly and
akes you off to the police station, and you are identified again. You are
free because you have finished your sentence, but they are not satisfied.

Hence the expulsion orders from certain towns, ec.
Abolition does not foresce any of this. It s a more complex concept,
and cannot be geasped immediaely. But there remains this curious logical
anomaly: in theory ablation is possibl, in practice it is impossible in a
social context where prison is obviously an essential component.

“The destruction of prison. on the other hand, clearly linked to the
revolutionary concept o destruction of the State,exists within . process
of struggle. In order for what we said earler 1o be fully understood, our
discourse must ot be based on models of effciency, s that would distort
it The struggles we paticipatein and ther consequences can never b seen
as geting something in exchange for what we do, of necessarly getting
resultsfrom what we put o the carpet. On the contrary. we are offen unable.
o 5ce the consequences of the struggles we participate n, there s a very
wide rlational dispersion and the end results cannot be freseen. We have
o idea what might happen asfar asother people active inthe strugele are
concerned, comrades doing diffeent things, changes inrelations, changes

etc. Allof these things come late, when we think everything

We are having this discussion here tonight, and for me this i also
struggle. . Because it is ot enough for me just 1o talk for the pleasure of
hearing my own voice, and am convinced thatsome new ideas areentring
your heads.justas Lam experiencing the joy of being here and fecling your
physical presence. We are talking about something close o my heart and
will ke this gift you are giving me away with me. Justas I hink | can give
you something o take avay with you that might bear fruit at some time in
the future, in another sitation, another context. And that has nothing to do
with quantiy or effciency: it means anything at all it means something
i practice in the things we do, in the transformation we bring about, not
in the abstractrealm of theory or utopia. That is what 1 am trying to say

about the destruction of prison. Because as soon as we put ourselses in

this logic and begin o act. even in discussions like this evening, or with
other things that we won't discuss here but could go into tomorrow or at
some tme inthe near future, we begin o transform rality. Prison becomes
one clement of this transformation, and by transformation we mean
destruction—partialdestrucion n view of the final destructon of the Stae.
Lam aware that this concept might seem t0o rash o 0o philosophical. But
25 s00n as we start o think about it becomes clear because it becomes &
basis for all the actons we carry out every day and for the way we behave.
with those close tous. those we relateto 2nd who put up ith us every day.
as well s those whorm we see from time to time.

‘The revolutionary project s also this. There is no such thing as
separate worlds.the world 1 live with my companion, with my children,
with the few revolutionary comrades I have met in my life who want to
overturnthe world, all absolutely separate. That's not so, s ot ik tha.
1FLam a bastardin my sexual relaions, | cannot be revolutionary. because
these relations immediately transfer themselves into the wider context. |
might fool one, two, three people. thenthe fourth il take me to task and
Lean't deceive them, There must necessarily be uity o nten,tht lective
affinity that links me to all my action, in any context whatsoever, in
everything 1 do. which cannol separate..IfLam bastard, it will come out
sooner o latr.

Butlet’s get back to our argument which we seem to have left along
way off.

Letslook a the whole question of prison,the sentence,the judiciary
thatsupports and makes the sentence possibe, and I think that most of you
here know more about this than me.

Lihink it would be good if we were o agree on a very simple linc of
thought: the concept o the sentence is based on one essential principle-

the privation thata given person suffers for not having behaved according

2
o pre-cstablished rules. Now. if we look carefully here, we see tht this
concept applics to many things. even interpersonal rlations. But it only
concerns particular sanctions when one finds oneself faed with the law,
State structure that is capable of enforcing the sanction according to
preestablished rules, o a last within the ambit o these rules.

Whatdoes the State want fromthe sentence? Not justthe State today:
which we know 1o some extent. but the Stat i general s it has developed
overa least the past three hundred years. What does Power, which has not
always defined isel the State, want to atain? In the firstplce it wanis to
make theso-called guilty party submit toa ighe levelof physical control
than i usual in the so-calld fre society.

Irepeat, 1 don'thave any specific competency in thi feld but from
what I have read, and it

"t much and perhaps not even up to date, the
process of contrl is now mainly entrusted o information echnology. data
gathering.etc. Basically.the niversal ecording of our detals tha s being
carricd out by the authorites (for example I have seen tha they are even

filing s through our electricity bills) s, 50 to speak. a roundup strstegy

that will end up netting all the fsh, 5o only a few will manage to escape.
But this flin is only an approximation. Some couniies are far shead in
this fild, with very cfficient procedures. yet even in these countris there
s still some space for extralegal, even if not exactly “outlaw’, activity in
concrete terms.

“The project of power i cetainly omnipresent and intends o include
everyone in this data gathering. The more cffective preventive control i,
the more the State becomes boss of the teritory. I is no coincidence. for
example, that there is so much talk about the Mafia, 1o the point of
oversepping the boundaries between myth and rality. where it s not clear
where one begins and the other ends. | don'tknow i i's worth going into

this question which, although fascinating, is not very important in my
opinion. However, there can be ltle doubt that this i being exploited at
he moment,alsofo the mystcrious am of reaching an equilibrium between
e poliical partics... But, apart from al this,the establishment of strong
preveniive control should make prison, at least as we know it far less
necessary. So, th function of the sentence is control, and the more this
function spreads o the point of becoming preventive,the more prison will
tend to change.

We must bear in mind that prison i quit different today to what it
was twenty years ago. It has changed more over the pastten years than it
id overthe last hundred,and the whole processi still moving at thisrate.
Today. the so-called model prisons are not all that different from the
maximum sccurity prisons of the ighiies. don’twant tosplithars here,
butinfact allhough there were partiular forms ofcontrlinthe maximum
sccurity prisons. thatwas not the main difference. 1 was held ina maximum
scurty wing similar o Fossombrone at atime when such places existed,
and was under aticle 0 for ew months, 5o know whatitmeans: naked
body searches every day, dozens of guards outside the cel door every
moning, and everything clse. These aspects arecertainy terble but they
are notthe main thing. There are no effectivly maximum sccurity prisons
et n sy today. Nowadays they may have fewe hourssocilityinsome

places,the exercise period may only be allowed in two's or three’s, but in

the future everything could get much worse. Why?

When control covers the whole social territory the so-called
spontancous prison population ill be greatly reduced. Many ‘crimes” will
be declassified an there will be less institutional imprisonment (possibly
through the use of electronic devices such as “Trasponder’, clectronic
braceletstha st off an alarm i you go beyond the assigned perimeter, and
50 0n). Then, yes. there willbe a real change in the prisons that reman.

Here isolation, psychological torture and white coats willtake the place of

B
bloodstains on the wall, and

cience will be applied (o obiain the total
destruction ofthe “outlaws” who have no intention of negotiating with the
State. That is how we see prison evolving, and I believe that studics are
already being carried out on the subject. There would o longer be any.
need to keep on calling the places of physical annihilaton that remain
“prisons”. in fuct they could be called anything atal.For example, it would
be sufficient to qualify someone’s behaviour as insane in order o have
them locked upin mentalasylum. And ifthe Law presents s from calling
these places asylums and they are called “Jesus Cheist’,they will sl be
places where people ae being killed slowly.

0.5 said before the law wants o control butit also wanis o bring
the offender, .. he who has marked himself with breaking the rules, back
o “normality. It wants to apply an orthopacdic technique to those who
have behaved differeny, draw them into the system and render them
innocuous. It wants to ensure that this deformed behaviour will not repeat
itself, and prevent any damage, or presumed damage, o the community.

There is a great contradiction here. Although it no longer fully
subscribes o the orthopaedicideology—and we il see within whal limits
it does accept t—the judiciary realise tht the sentencing actually makes
the ifferen” more dangerous. So,on the one hand they want to rehabiliate
deviants through the use of the sentence and on the other this makes ther
more dangerous. In other words. it gives the individual access 10 a process
that makes him become more of a danger o socity. which might have been
quite accidental up unil then

“The disinction | mentioned is based on the existence of a o clearly
dentifiable minoriy of rebels that consitue the real commurity of outlas
inside the prisons. These ireducible individuals have none of the political

eharacteristics that a debate i the sixties tried to pin on them.
1 think that any distinction now betvieen “politcal” and “common”
Taw prisoners that existed for a long time and caused so much damage in
my opinion. no longer has any reason to exist. This distinction was
sometimes even proposed and supported by anarchistsinthe sevenies and
the firsthalfoftheeighties. At thattime it was adopied by povwerin order
o maintain a certain equilibrium. For example, when you called thejuler,
thepoliticals would shout ‘agente (offce) and theother risoners ‘guardi’
(guard). So.as soon as you heard someone shouting ‘agente’ you knew that
they were a comrade. There, something so simple created a disincton tht,
movedinto otherareasofien came tobe distorted by porwer nd transformed
into an instrument of recuperation. This disinction between political and
common law prisoners was nevr really valid anyway in my opinion, except
for those who wanted o use a part of the prison population for their own
ends: the growth of the militant—military and militant—party, the
possibilty of buikding up porwer reltions inside the prison and the plan o
use the ‘umpenproletarian’ prisoners. I few cases crtan elements were
even used to carryout low works offutice n plain words, as murderers o
Kill people. Have | made myselFclear? This hastaken place. We are talking

of an historic responsibilty that some of the personalities who once led

the old marxistleninist combatant parties and are in free circulaton today
took upon themselves. Some of our own comrades were also killed that
way. Not because this distinction was made, but by an instrumentalisation
of it consequences. It put so-called common prisaners at the disposition
of some of those who defined themselves politcal prisoners in order to

increase their bargaining power inside the pris

m or with the Ministry in
order to get cerain results. This ran parallel o the miliarstc practice of
the management of power or “counterporwer” outside (each o their own
taste) and the central importance of the industial workers, guided by the

party that s to lead them to their emancipation. These are all dinosaurs

5
today as far s 1 am concerned. They're ot n touch with realiy as e i,
atleast hope they re not, maybe I'm wrong.

Itmight be useful to pause here for a moment i order to clarify our
opposition o any strgele for amnesty. something that rased more than a
few objections a number of years ago, even among anarchists.

“The situation has changed now concerning relatons between the
prisoners who insiston positons wrongly defined as ireducible snd those.
who have entered ino negotiation with the State. AL tha ime, 1985-86 1
think. 1 published a book, “And we will Always be Ready to Storm the
Gates of Heaven Again'®, which many considered to be a ricism of the
validity of a “struggle for amnesty”. The prevailing idea al the time was
contained in Scalzone’s so-called manifesto which carried, preciscly. the
proposal of a struggle for amnesty and this was also made by some of the
anarchist movement, with the usual lack of comprehension. But that was,
lerssay. asecondary effcc, It wasn't the mainzim of the book. The important
thing. till oday, isthat nobody has the right o say,‘Comrades, the war is
over'. First, nobody declared this warinthefrst place and so, until proved
otherwise, no one can decree the end of it. No Stte declared the war, nor
did any armed group have the idea of declaring one. The reasoning is
characteristic of the miltaritlogic, the logic of opposing groups tht decide
o call a truce at some point. No one can el us that the wear i over', even
Jess o when the reason fordoing soissimply t justify one’s own dsistence

161 don't feel like carrying on. given that no one can be forced to
coninue i they don't fellike i, Lsay, "My friends. a man i made of flesh
and blood, he can' g0 on to nfinity. So. if | don'tfeel | can make i, what
must 1 do? Sign a piece of paper? I don' carry out impure actions, 1 don't
get comrades arrested. I'm simply making a declaration of my own
desisence.”[have always considered this o be a legitimae positon, because

nobody can be obliged to carry on if they don’t feel up o i. But desistence

»
isnolonger legiimate f, i order o justify .| come out it the statement,
0 can't carry on because the war i over'. No. I no longer agree, because
where does that lead us? To all the others both inside and outside prison
for whom it st true that the war is over, or for whom his concept is
dubious, but end up believing it hecause everybody is saying so. And
desisting or not desisting, they end up reaching the same conclusion. It
‘would be quite indecorous for me to push others o desist i order or meto
justify my own personal decision to give up the struggle

Now. conditions are radically diffrent today. not in the sense that
this indecorousness no longer exist, but i the sense that t i out of date
s other atitudes prevail. They no longer say “The war i over’, which
morcover would be unfounded a they should really say “The war never
began: our war wasn' really a social warat ll . But most of them prefer o
dedicate themselves to astrology or sometimes, o asisting prisoners. Yel,
i you like. some of them might say. “Perhaps we were wrong about some
tings, perhaps other ideas should have been accepted n some ofthe debates
Thatwould be fine

that ook place around the beginning of theseveniics
crtical approach. I'm thinking of one meeting at Porto Marghera where,
among other things. the killing of Calabresi [supercop responsible for the
death of anarchist Giuscppe Pineli n1969 when he was; suicided” from
the th floor window of Milan central police sation] was under discussion
“This was very important debat, which nobody talks shout becanse hadly
anybody knows anything about it Here, for the frst time in Ltaly, two
positions appeared concerning this acion. . But peshaps not everybody is
interested inthese questons... Well betsieen astrology and assisentialism,
another hyporthesis has appeared. ‘I’ necessary to start the war again, but
with different weapons, not with th critique of arms, but with the arms of
eritique. They are ready o take on the world again, with words. As fras |

Know, this chatter concerns the management of daily lfe. So, centres for

7
the elaboration of chatter are appearing everywhere: centres for the
elaboration of information, radi stations (very important, where between

some strange music and a pseudo-cultural di

cussion, conceps of taking
over the teritory are pushed through). squats verging on legalsation or
verging on surviva, closed up n themselvesin the misergble gheto. I his
way dreamsof controlin the eriory are reavakened. Through evarnished
old conceps. the same old centralised. more orless militant party (but you
can'tsay that any more) management i geting into gear, and anew pattern
s emerging. Thisis allchater forthetime being: fthey areroses they vill
blossom. 1 think that’s wha is happening, we don't need to give precise
indications, we all know what I'm talking about. This chatter has some
interesting aspects: therecycling of old caratids in disuse... Of course, me
100 1'm an old caratd, for goodness sake... But il have some ideas that
Seem 10 me o be iteresting, . that's just my opinion, mightbe wrong.
“There isstilla nucleus of comrades inprison who are not repared o
bargain withthe State. Our solidarty can go to these comrades, but that's
not enough. It can't be enough for someone with centuries of prison on
their backs. Detailed proposals are necessary.indications seting out the
concrete destruction of prisons. AL the prsen time, at least o it seems to
me, there is o sign of any project based on the destruction ofprisons. I s
necessary to startall over again. Ifyou nsis on kind of cohabitation with
power, you ncrease desistence from the struggle. And i ot justa question
of a model o intervention that I disagree with but which I might take into
consideration whiledoing other things, ifcould. Ufortunately.this whole
‘mechanism i starting up again and could give certain result, resuls that
are ot acceptable to us, but which i themselses re quite legitimate. That
s why the situation isdiffrent oday. On the other band. you son't get far
with demonstrations of solidarity. such as. for example, one hundred

thousand posteards addressed to the President of the Republic. These things

=
are wsually a waste of time, they have never meant much. Yes, leters,
telegrams, might help comrades tofeel they haven't been abandoned, because

s nice for someone in prison to et letes ofsolidarity.etc. Then, within
certain imits, that can make an impression onthe prison authorites and on
theindividual screw, who when he passes o control you at night might not
Keep the lighton for thre seconds, but only one, because he's scared and
says o himself, “This one got twenty elegrams today, maybe one of his
friends willbe waitingfor me outsice and split my head open’, vry important
things, for goodness’ sake, I'm not denying it IUs a question of doing
something, applying pressure, even minimal. in order to create more
important deterrent perhaps, but ooking a things ealistically I'm afraid
these comades tll have many years ahead of them

The debate on amnesty was nota simple theoretical exercise, howerer.
1t soon became an instrument for realizing certain practcal actins and
suggesting a way of intervening on the question of prison. It was. and
continues t be, importantin trying to pose the problem of prison from a
revolutionary point of view: The acceptance of the struggle for amnesty
was a macroscopic mistake, in my opinion. It was also proposed
inconsiderately and ignorantly by more than a few anarchists who, not

Knowing what to do, and not being aware of the risks implict in such a

choice, decided to support it It was a serious poli

al and revolutionary
mistake which, [ have 1o say in all honesty. 1 did't make.

For example, the position regarding the Gozzini law” changed in
reation to the justification of the struggle for amnesty. Such choices had
consequences for the supporters of revolutionary authorit. Clearly if
somebody says that prison changes deterministically according to the
changesinsociety, any attempt by the enemy to adjust my behaviour o the
historical evolution o realiy,for example the Gozzinilaw, is al right by

me. So L accept it in view of the struggle moving into other sectors. The

»
same goes fortrade union bargaining. So I don'tsee why it should be any
ifferentforprson. Whatseemslike innocent sociological thory becomes
a precise political choice involving the lives and future of thousands of
comradesin prison. We have always maintined that we are against arnesty,
orrathera struggle for amnesty (which axe two different things, when they.

give us an amnesty of their own accord we'l ake it and how).

Now let's come back tothe contradictions inherent i the concept of
the sentence and the various ways in which it is appled. The theoretical
debate on prison stillcontans the basic contradictions seen sbove, which
arerelly unsolvable.

In fact, these contradictions have become more acute n recent tmes.
Not that they didn't exist before. But the function of the sentence, the
structure meting it out and priso tself—let's say around or up unil 1500
was t hold people unil given sanctons were sppled. Or they functioned
purely as separation, o keep certain people away from thir socialcontext,
I Piombi’, i the seventeeth century, as you can read in Casanova's
Memoires, was a prison in Venice that was selfmanaged by the inmates.
There were no custodians inside the prison walls, only outside, and that
was one of the worstprisons of the era. But already with the ‘Piombi’ we
arelter than 1500, we ae fully into the seventeenth century.

S0 the old prison had a different function. The gim of the modern
prison s to ‘recuperate’ —we are talking about the theory behind it—to
bring the individual back to a condition of normality. So prison has had
o functions the old one where it was simply a laceinwhich he individual
was parked while awaiting his or ber fae (the death penalty, mutlation,
exclusion from the social context, a journey to the Holy Land. which was
equivalent (o the death penalty given the difficultes of such a journey in
1200-1300) and the modern one. Between these there was theintroduction

)
of the so-called workhouses at the beginning of the seventeen hundreds,
withthe aim of geting prisoners (o work.

Atapurely cultural level there s a theoretical debate that we don't
need togointohere, Suffice it 1 say that rison structures such as Benthar's
Panopicon, where asingle ustodian could control all the wings at once-
‘and bear in mind thatsimilar structures sl exist in many prisons today-
saw the light at the same time as the industial evolution. Some see a
hisorical prallel between these two developments, the igure of the modern
prisoner emerging alongside that of the worker i the caly industrial plans.
“The industrial condition develops and transforms, and has been the object
of much critcism, whereas the concep of naturalism n law remains, and
‘siusnaturalism i tll a the rootof the sacrality of the norm.

does'really make any difference whether the sacrality of the norm
originates from the positivist doctine, rom God. from a law intrinic to
the development of snimated beings. o is intinsic to the development of
the Hisory of man and the vicissitudes of human reason (hisorical finalism).
Anybody supporting any one of these theses is always looking for a
foundation upon which to erecttheir own behavioural construction, their
own castle of rules. Once the later i buill, anyone who finds themselves.
outside the fortified circle becomes a legitimate candidate for prison.
segregation. exclusion or death, s the case may be.

Now. the thesis that inerests us mos, because it s st an object of
debate and study today. is that concerning natural law, .. a law that is
natural o reason as it develops throughout isory. This conceptis important
because it allows for some interesting modifications. tha s o say it has
not been crystallsed once and for all in the will f God. but changes
according t events in istory. It developed fully with the Enlightenment in
the cighteenth century. has all the limitations of the philosophical

interpretation of the ime, and contains two essential elements: first history.

3
then reason. History is seen to be progressive, moving from a situation of
haos, animality or danger towards one that is safer and more humane.

Bovio said, ‘History is moving towards anarchy

and many anarchist

least of my generation, have repeated that. 1 have never believed it possible
o draw such a sraightline on this question. | am not a all convinced that
history is moving towards anarchy. There s another shadow n this beautiful
enlightened,then posiivit then idealist, then historicst discourse, that
runs paralel o t. Al of these theories were lborated in the acadernia of
power,in universities where philosophy and history are studied. places
where the suppliersof the Stae prisons ae hard at work. And wha s this
other shadow? It the Shadow of Reason. Wh s Reason always right? |
don'tknow. s always right o sentence someone. People are sentenced o
the electric chair with reason, nobody s sentenced o death without reason,
there are a thousand reasons for sentencing people o death. A sentence
withoutreason doesn't exis. 1 have been n prison many times, with reason,
their reason.

Ithas been sai that Nagism, realized in Germany in the thisties and
foties, was an explosion of rrationality that i, of lack of reason. Well,
Ihave never believed such thing. Nazism was the extreme consequence of
the application of reason, i the Hegelian reason of the objective spirit
that realizes itelf in Histoy. taken to its natural conclusion. The most
ogicaldiscourse in this sense was made by an Halian philosopher, Geniile,
ata conference in Palermo where he made reference o the moral force of
the truncheon. By striking in the name of reason, the truncheon is always
ight, and State violence s always ethical because the State s ethical.

AN this might sound stupid. but it isn't because it constitutes the
s in the

foundation of so-called modern progressivism. We have scen
Communist Party, the workers' party, in marxist so-called revolutionary

‘movements, and also on the Right in right-wing movements. Whereas the

2
Right. for s own reasons of identity, wrapped itself up in conventional
irrationalism (flags, symbols, discourses on destiny. blood. ace,etc.) the
former packaged themselves in another vaiety: progress, isory. the future,

the proletarat that was to defeat the bourgeoisi, the State that was to
extinguish tself. And, | might add, more than a few anarchiststagged onto
this discourse,going along with this enormous metaphysical andideological
swindle. They simply pointed out that history was not moving towards the
extinetion of the State but towards anarchy and that it was necessary to
extingaish the State right away in orde to reach anarchy more quickly.
“Thisideological subllety did not move the content of this journey an inch
from the marxist one. And it never entered anyone's head tha it was the
discourse of reason, and that it might be swindle and serve a abasis and
an alibi for buikding a wall around the diferen.

Thatis why it is necessary to look atthe optimism of the anarchists
for example Keoportkin's —more decply and criticall.in order o see the
limitations of
of Kropotki

the anarchist positivist tendency. Everything that I'm saying here might

i way of thinking. It is important to see the equivocation

“sced under the snow’.

s well as those of other comradesof

seem far from the question of prison—on the contrary, this is exactly the
theoretical and philosophical terrtory in which prison finds ts justification.

We should also look at Malatesta’s voluntarism, which scems to be

the opposite but fuls o come up with any solutions unless it is inserted
‘witin the ‘objectve’ deterministi development of history in the direction
of anarchy. 1 might have limitations. my personal capacity might be
circumseribed,buthistory i moving towards anarchy anyway. soiftdoesn't
come about now it will o some time inthe future, We should also take a.
Took at the limitations of Stmer's individualism, something we tried o do

atthe recent meeting in Florence. We need to see if such limitations really

n
existandifso. what they are, obviously being very diffrent from those of
Malatesta and Kropotkin.

So.what what conclusions can we draw atthis point? Prison s notan
abuse of power, it notan exception, it s normal. The State builds prisons
s01that it can put usin them. Inso doing it is not doing anything strange, it
s simply doing it job. The State is not a prison State, it s the State, that's
all I the same way tha it exprsses isel through economic and cultural
actvity, poliical management and the management of free ime, it deals
with the management of prison. These clements are not separate, it is
impossibl o talk sbout prison on ts own. it wouldn't make sense because
it would be taking one element out of context. On the other hand. if this
clement s putnto s proper context, and tha s exactly whatthespecialist
cannot o, the discourse changes. Thatis why westrted offwiththe problem.
of specialisation. because the specialist i only able to alk about his own.
subject. Given that 1 knor something about prison, 1 don'tsee why I should
talk about anything el

I believe that collective experiences, if this concept still means
anything,are composed of so many individual moments. Woe betide if e
were t oblierae these individual momentsin the name of a superior onc,
that which the marvists defined subsumption. Subsumption of socity. never!

These terror

i processes must be absolutely condemned. The individual
has moment that is his or hers and the prisoner has his or her moment,
which i not the same as that of anotherprisoner | bsolutely disagree with
those who say tht L who have beenin prison, must srugele more effectively
than someone who hasnot. No,because I strugele differetly from someone
who has never been n prison and just as differently from one who has done

more time than me, and so on. And, viceversa, I could meet a comrade who

is capable of making suggestions to me, of making me understand, fecl

imagine, or dream a ifferent kind of struggle, even ifhe has never been in

Y
prison. No specialisation. Remember the first things that were said this
evening: no professionality. no talk of professors, even lss professors of
prison maters. Fortunately. there s no specialisation here, we are not at
universiy

W are all individuals who seck each other, who meet, go away, come
together again, moving on the basis of affinity. also transitory, which can
disappearorintensify. We arelike a mulitude of stoms in movemen. which
have a very strong capacity forreciprocal penctzation. It is nota question,
as Leibnez said, of monads without windows. We are not solated, we have
ourindividual value, allindividuals do. Oply by keeping this incliminble
moment constantly present s it possibleto talk of socity.or the capacity
toact, move and live together. otherwise any socity atal wouldbe prison.
1 must sacrifice even a tiny partof my individuality in the name of the
Aufbehung—overcoming in the Hegelian sense o the term-—in the name
of an abstract principle... even anarchy. even freedom, then I don'tagree.
Prison i certainly an extreme condition and so, like all total conditions,
totalinsitutions, i showws one's true fabric clearly. Its like pulling pcce
of cloth as far as it can g0, and just before it ears apat the weeave begins o
appear. There,the individual who submits o the most violent conditions
reveals the cloth of which he orsheis made. Maybe he o she will discover
things about themselves that they would never have imagined in other
situations. Butthisstarting point i important and fundamenta: noclement,
idea, dream or wtopia can take away this individual moment, nor can the
later be sacrificed to any of the former.

But let's come back to our argumen. Prison is the normality of the
State, and we, who live underthe State with ourdaily lives regulated by is
pace and times,ar ivinginaprison. I my opinion this hasbeen incorrectly
but inerestingly defined as an immaerial prison. That i to sa. it s not

visible as such. It does not enclose us in such a direct, shocking way as the

3
walls of a prison do. Itis nevertheless areal prison,in that we are forced to

submit to and adopt models of behaviour that we didn't decide upon
ourselves, but have been imposed from outside, about which we can do
very lile.

But pison i also construction. I i a place,an ideology, a culture,
a social phenomenon. That i, it has a specific identity. so if on the one
hand we bring it out ofthis specificity. we cannol at the same time dlute it
into society. and simply say. “We are all in prison, my situation was no
ifferent when I passed through that wretched door and found myselfin an
cmpty cell with aloud radio blaring. | felt traumaat the moment I walked
through tha cel door and heard someone lock it behind me. This trauma.
exiss. it's not purely psychological, it also consiss of a fellow with a
bunch of keys that fangle continuously. the nose of which you carry with
you for the rest of your lfe. You never forget i i’s something that rings in
your ears, even atnight when you're aleep, hatnoise of the keys, someone
ocking the door on you. This fact of closing the dooris, 1 believe, one of
the most horrifying things that one human being can do o another. For me
someone who holds a key i his hand and locks a human being behind a.
door, no mater wha the lattr might have done, for me anyone who closes
that door is an absolutely contempible person. one about whorm it is
impossible o tlk about i terms of human faterity, human features and
50 on. Yet there are moments when you need this individual, when a
psychological mechanism connected to solitude lets loose. When you are
alone, in your hoe... ou've been alone for 3 month, a month and a half,
sv0 months. The days pass and you don'tsee anyone, sometimes you hear
incredible noises, atothers nothing, and you hear a foolstep there outside
‘You know it i his footstep. You are absolutely convinced that this is the
worst, most contemptible erson on earth. Yet at a certain poit you stand

behind the door and wait for him like a lover because when that despicable

3
person passeshe throws you ghane that reminds you that you are human
being. Because he (oo has o legs. two arms and two eyes. At a cerain
point you see him differentl. You no longer see the uniform, and you say.
10 yourself, ‘Humanity stil exists afier al.

That is what that hole, tha lte cell, leads 10, 5o you now have
someting specific that can no longer be seen asthe diluton of prison into
daily life. That s why prison s not immaterial. That is why prison is both
a specific, architectonic structure, and s at the same time diffused. We are
allin pison. but prison i aso something different. But we must not only
seeitas something different becauseif we did we would cease o understand
it

Tunderstand that al this might seem contradictory at first. But tha

just an impression.If you think about . it s no more contradictory than
anything else.

The sentence, we said,is the mechanism that the so-called important
philosophers... think of what Kant said about the sentence... this great
philosophersaid something horrendous... e said,‘On an island there is
community. and this community dissolvesiself and everybody goes away.
only one man remains, murderr. the last o kill man. Now the community
has broken up. thre i absolutely nothing to safeguard, there is no longer
common good, there i nothing Ieft o revive, wel, that man must sill do
his sentence.” This is what Kant said, the philosopher who opened up the
perspectve of modern historicism. Bah.

Anyway...So. the sentence. whatdoes it do? According to theoreicians
of every hue, it restores the equilibrium that has been upse, i edresses
balance. But what does the sentence really do? It docs something clsc.
Firs of all it precipitates the individual nto condition of uncertinty.
Thatis, anyone facing such a construction, such an effcient mechanism,

finds himself before something bigger than himself. This mechanism is

7
composed o lawyers. judges, arabinier, police. house searches, pushing
and puling,curses,being stripped naked, flexions —once there used o be
anal inspections, which anyone who hasa't been subjected to can't
imagine—the conditions of detenion inthe pison... Tht i the senence
ouare sl at the beginning, you still haven' been accused of anything
yetjusta e words ona iece of paperbearing an articl ofthe penal code
thatyou don't even understand, but aleady the sentence eners your blood
and becomes part of you. And how does it become partof you? By puttng
youin a conditon of uncertinty. You do'tknow what's ging (o happen
o you. You can be the most hardened criminal and find yourself n that
state of uncertainty, and I know tha hecause | have spoken o people who
are apparently in control, people who, when they come into prison, greet
the officer in charge,greet this one and that one, but when they g0 0 bed
and put thei head on the pillow, star o cry. Because the situation is like
that, when you come to find yoursefin these conditions s notcasy o see
how i’ all going to end. I've also spoken to many comrades. we have
joked together about the situation i prison, but we couldn't deny that we
had been placed in a situation of uncertainty where you don't know what
0 expect the next day... An this condition of uncerainty is perhaps the
essential element,the one a the oot of all the syndzomes, all the specific
illneses, everything that emerges from time in prison. You will b in a
condition of uncerainty ll the time you are inside. Infact, up untilthe
‘minutes before you go through the last gate—bear in mind that there are
abouttwenty between your cell door and the outside one—you don'tkaow
Whether, exactly two metres away from the last gat, a revolt will break out
inside, you'll get involved in it and you're lst: you can strt talking again
tsventy years on. So. tis uncertaintyis practicaly inside you. you know
all this

doesn'taffect me: prison, death, twenty years, two months..., comrades,

i's nside you, and you can'tsay, ‘OK, afterall I'm a evolution

Y
thats bullshit. I bullshit that I've said, me 0o, o give myself courage.
and also to give courage to others, the family,my mother, my father, who.
were old and were broken-hearted by the visits. When I went o prison the
first time they cried. poor things. These are difficultsituations, and you
project uncertinty towards the outside, you project ton o those who love
‘you, yourchildren,on a whole situation tha doesn't disappear with chater
I remember when, precisely finding myself in solation for the frst time,
twenty-fiveyears ago. I strtd o sing anarchistsongs...and L hate anarchist
songs. Howdid | manage 1o sing thse songs inthere? | was singing to give
myself courage,like a child tha starts o whistle ortell firy stories 50 as
notto be scared in the dark

The other clement, which I expericnced palpably. was the
deformation o communication. Youcan't make i to communicate. I order
1o be able to say something. lets say to change your lawyer. a whole
bureaueratic procedure must be gone throughs inthe evening you have to
stick a piece of paper on the armoured door of your cel saying that you
want 10 g0 1o the regisry office nest day. The next day they call you, and

‘you st off to the office. Ca

culaing, let's say.tha s shout seventy-five
metres away. you think you'll only be a few minutes, but no! It can take
from ten minutes to an hour and a half o cross these seventy.-five melres,
and. like anidiot, you wait behind each door for some angel in uniform to
come and open i for you. trac-trac, and you pass the fist, second. third
fourth obstacle and everything else. This changes your world compleely
‘What does it change? It changes your whole conception of time and space
Tt sounds easy. because we cope with this concep like we do with money.
Hike coins that we use every day. Butit's not so simple, because time i not
whatis marked by the clock: that s absolue time, Newton's ime, that has
been determincd once and for all Alongside this time there is that of a

French philosopher, and ths is known as the real duration, that's 1o say,

»
there s time in the sense indicated by Saint Augustine, time as
consciousness, s the duration of our consciousness. Thal is waiting. We
measure wating by the beatof our ensations, and it duration i not at all.
equalto the absolute time of the clock.

Once clocks were forbidden in prison. now, since the prison eform
n 1974, they are allowed. And s worse, in my opinion. Once you never
Knew what time it was, you guessed it with the sun, or with the prison
routine, which constiuted a ‘matural lock. an institutional clock, hence
you knew that a haf past seven the armoured door would be opened and
the day would begin. The noise they make in opening that door has its
hisoricaly recognizable function. which has developed in various ways
throughout time. While doing some research on the Inguisition, I found
instructions in 2 manual of 1600 on how to open the door in cases where
the Confratelidella Compagnia di Bianchi, the ones with the white hoods.
that i, had to take a condemned prisoner 1o the scaffold. The Spanish

Inguisition also existed in Sicily. so they were well organised. Those.
belonging o this Compagnia dei Bianchi had the ob of assisting condemned
prisoners duringthethree days preceding exccution. One of ther tasks was
o ensure tha they were ready tobe brought o justice, and how did they do
that? By inventing a paticular echniques they acted a though they vere
about 1o take the prisoner to the scaffold. They woke him up early. made
ot of noise, marched in groups with allthose entrusted with thi operation,
the halberdiers, etc.. But it wasn'ttre, it was merely an atrocious staging.
simply o see how the poor devil would react, I they reacted properly. i.c.
didn't go crazy. they were considered ready for the final operation. So.
opening an armoured door 't like opening just any door. These well

built young men, instructed in Parma, had received particular ispositions:

the armoured door s o be opened with extzemely violent blows,theslecping

prisoner must jump up inthe air. From that moment he rust think, *There,

w0
the world of drearms i over, now th institution bgins. now they are teling
me what todo... Half pas seven. you don't o out,you g0 out at halfpast
cight, i other words. you do everything according to the prison routine,
whichis obviously whal they want.

Forexample. don'tknow, something important...th passage of
time s also marked by oher things: the milk arivesin the morning (1 have
thought a lot about these lte things. anyway there’s nothing ele to do n
prison so what do you do? You think.). then they bring you an egg or two at
e, then at half past ten or eleven the fruit, then at twelve o'clock lunch,
then at two they bring you something else, | don't know, some jam, why?
Because thatway th time passes. they regulat it fo you. The arival of the
food is an event, you frame it within this segregalive context and that is
what your life boils down to.

Allthis seems pifle butin my opinion it i science, eal prison
science. What do the so-called prison operators who think they know
everything, know about all this? Firs of al, the university professor has
never been i prison. Normally those who take an inerest in prison don't
have the fantestidea of what it really is. Let's leave aside law professors,
who don't even know wha they ae talking about, poor things. We are
alking about prison workers who, the loser they scem o get to the inside
of prison the less they possibly understand about it. Lawyers and judges
yes. they have been inside prisons. but where? In the external par, i the
visitors ooms. Apartfrom exceptional cases where a superintenden from
the court comes into the wing (but he only comes ino the wing. not the

cells), lawyers and judges don't normally know what a prison is. I'll go

further, even the prison workers, the psychologists, social workers, every
species of cop, don’t know what prison is. In fact, what s their job? They
20 into rooms that are reserved for them, call the prisoner, have a fine

discussion, then go home and eat their dinner. And, moreover, even the

al
screws don't know what prison is. and can I tell you that rom personal
experience. For example, when 1 was in Bergamo prison and the other
prisoners and 1 within the limts of our posibilities,organised—vwe dids't
call it revolt, but a kind of protest—because they were taking out the
plugs we used o block the hols tha the screws had made in the toiets o
control us even there. Allpisoners block these holes as best they can, with
anything they can lay their hands on: paper. pcces of wood. hanging towels
and a hundred other things. Usually these defences are left alone, but
sometimes the goverorin Bergamo gave theorder 1o getrid of them, sothe
screws pushed them out with pencil In answer 0 o protestthe governor
replid, “Why ae you making such fuss about nothing, aftr allwe are all
men’. What, we are all men? “You are the governor and L am the prisoner
and 1 don't want the guard looking at me when I'm in the toilt” So the
‘governor thought that the problem was something tivil. But his barracks

camaraderie showed that,

though he was the governor ofa prison, he had
no idea what prison i. Because 1 o not g0 (0 thetoilet along with my cell
mate, a prisoner ike myself, a compaion of mine whom you certainly
can't, interms of humanity. friendship and personal relationship, compare
2 prison governor, tha's obvious. And when the toilt was in the ccll,
one invented a thousand expedients to find the way (0 use it alone. The
toilet used to be right inside the cell. When I was in prison for the first
time,in Catania nearly a quarterof a century ago, | gotwork egistering the
prisoners” accounts, and I noticed thal many prisoners consumed huge
amount of . Pellegrino magnesium. When 1 asked why. they explained
that by taking this purgativ every weck thir shitdidn'tsmell or atleast it
idless. What does that show us? Thatthe governor and thescrews have no
dea about what prison i Because to understand prison. you must be on
the other side of the door when the guard locks it There is the question of
the ey, without the key i’ allthory.

@
50,10 get back 0 the point. Of course, prison is composed of the

walls,the cop with the machine gun patrolling them, the exe

se yard, the

mist that des

nds o the yard and you don'tknow where you ae, what
planct you'reon, whether you'te n exile, o the moon,etc. But, basiclly
prison s the cell And you can be alone in tha cel or with others, and
these are two separate conditions and two different kinds of suffring
Because yes, we are strong. tc. but | have done prison alone, and i's no
joke. The last time 1 did almosttwo yearsalone, and it was heavy. Pethaps
with otherstis even heavie, o ateattis heavy ina iffrent way because
the animal man behaves strangely in reclusion and so... This is a rough
outline ofthe problems o do with prison, tld lightly, and I won't g ino
certain other questions.

1 had made & note of some other problems but they are no very
important,just want to mention couple of things. frst the smell. Prison
has a particular smell that you never forget. You smel it n the morning. |
remenmber, i’ a smel that you ind in three other place: bars when they
openinthe morning, billard rooms and rothls. In places where the human
animal finds tselfin particular conditions of suffering ther i a partcular
odour,and prison hasthis smell and you never forge i, you notice i most
in the morning when they open the armoured doors, o't ask me why. The

other problem is noise, the noi

really something terrible, there's no

way you can get used to . I's ot ust the music, the Neapolitan songs that

torture you. You can't describe i, i’s something horrendous. Whereas a
problem of secondary importance, a least as far as 1 could see. and not
only from my own personal experience, was the problem of sexual desire:
thisis notsuch a problem asit might seem from outside. | sa theprisoners”
response 1o questionnaire sent round by the minisry about fifieen years

ago concerning the eventuality of setting up a system of so-called love

o
hours. e’ sa. with one’s legitimate partner. and it was almost completely
negaive

Now lets ook atthe final part of the question,if you are not oo
dazed. What canthe perspective of prison be? Thatis. in what way is pover
trying torestructure prison conditions which, abviously. are never static?
Prison s uncertan by defniion, so you never know wha's going to happen.
“This uncertainty isalso ambivalent a far s the rules are concerned. There
i v tha says thatthe prisoner must be given a copy of the prison rules
when he or she arrves, in order o read and respect then, i they want, In
some prisons, like the Dozza in Bologna, for example, they give a three
page extract, but the actual rules are a beast of 150 pags. So incredible
things happen. I someone gets hold ofallthe rules and reads them carefully
they can end up creaing problems for the nstitution

15aid prison i something that s constantly undergoing profound

transformation and, in my opinion (i

s my personal ide

moving
towards an opening, that is. it is tending to open up and have people
partcipat. In the seventis it ook you aboutan hour o make a fried egg or
acoffee in your cell because you had to make a kind of construction with
empty match boxes covered i ilver paperfrom cgarette packes, then put
sold gas under i theso-called ‘el then ligh this thing,always messing
about with this alchemy near the toilet because there were no tables or
chuirs. You had o fold up the bed in the moming s0 there was a kind of
platform to sit on. There is a considerable difference between these
primordial condiions and those of today where there are even structures
where you can cook i thejudicial prisons as well s the penal nsttutions
(the lattr are even better equipped and more ‘open’)

“The reform has been approved. This eform hascertainly mproved
prison conditions to some extent, of course. It has created a few extra

‘moments of sociality, made other things worse, and led to greater disparity

m
between prisoners. The Dozza, for example, is a model prison. Buil as
specialhigh security prison, it is now being used as a normal one and it s
infinitely worse than the old San Giovani. 1 have been in both and can
honestlysay that the Dozza is worse. But whereas there were bars overthe
windows at San Giovanni. then the metal geid behind the bars, then the
ventiltion grid,inthe Dozza there are only vertical bars and so you seem
tobe more fre hut with all that conditions o the whole are worse, they are
moreinbuman, Whereas at San Giovani you coulds'tleave your cell and
walk about n the wing. inthe Dozza you ae free o do so (abways in the
hours fixed by the direction) so, there are diffrences... But these are, you
might say. pulsations within the prison system. I’ sufficent for something
10,20 wrong and the wider berth immediately esticts tself, I instead of
one prisoner hanging himself every 15 days there is one a veck, things
immediaely start o change. At the end of 1987, precisly at the Dozza there

was a simple protest which the prison authorities responded 10 with an

armed attack against the nfirmary.led by the naz-style miltay commander
of the prison. In such sitations prison changes in flush.

But these pulsations inside partcular prisons are related 1o the
pulsation ofdevelopment and ransformation i the prison system 25 whle,
whichis moving towards an opening. Why is this? Because it corresponds
1o the development of the prison system, the extension of its peripheral
structures and the structures of the Stte as a whole. That i 0 say. there is
more partcipation. This concept deserves o be looked at more closely

Bear in mind, on the basis of what we were saying before about

contradictions, thatthe concept of partcipation is ot at allseparate from
the concept of separateness. I participate and in an initial phase of this
participation | fel closer tothe others who participate along with me. As
this increases, however, the very process of patiipation isolates me and

makes me different from the others, because each one follows his own road

5
i this paricipaion. Let’ ry to illstate this concept beter, because it s
not very simple. You can see partcipation everywhere, n schools. in the
factory.in the various functions of the unions, inschool and actory council,

basicall in the whole world of production. Paticipation comes about in
different ways according to the situation.In the ghetto arcas of cities, for
exampl. Tuke the St Cristoforo ara in Catania [Sicily.for example. It s
oneof the biggest ghettoes i the own, with high concentration of social.
problems, but things are changing, there are the family consultancics,
whereas once th police could't even circultethere. Horw has this greater
partcipation changed the area? Has s brought it closerto ortaken it urther
away from the rest of Catania? Thatis the question. In my opinio, it has
isolated it from the other areas even more, by making it even more specific.

In my opinion. the aim of paticipation s (0 divide.

Prison i opening up to paticipation, there are structures for an
inside-outside dialogue, such as “Prison-teritory', letssay. composed of a
bunch of swindlers, third-rat ideologues. representativs of own council,
unions and schools, and delegations from the Bishopric. All his mob do s
o get authorisations to go inside th prison based on article 17, and contact
the prisoner, thereby estabishing a contact between inside and outside
Any prisoner has one hundred., one thousand problerms, he or sh s ike &
patient. I you go into a hospital and talk to 2 patient, they have all the
illneses in the book. I you go into prison and talk toa prisoner you will
find that he or she has a thousand problems. Above all, they are always
innocent, didn't do anything wrong and ther Fmily is always ncedy. Well,
the things prisoners always talk sbout. On the other hand. they cach look
after their own nterests and, in any case, i's not appreciated in prison for

someone to come out il s bullshit,

, “Prison doesn't do anything o me,

rubbish..", no, that wouldn't go down well
Participation causes further separation, a greatr division inside
the prison, because the few people of a consciously illegal dispositon,
that is o say the ones who really are “outlaws”. stand out. In a prison
‘population o, et say. one hundred prisoners, you can already distinguish
them i theyard. There you cansee who th serious people are and who re
not, and you can see thatin many ways, from the many signals they give
out. A whole discourse develops inside, based on the way they walk, the
choicesthey make, the words they use. | Know many of thesethings can be
aken the wrong way. 1 am not praising stercotypical behaviour, what I'm
saying i tha there's 2 spcificity inside prison. There isthe prisoner who
is aware of his job of being a prisoner, his qualificaion as a prisoner, and
there i the prisoner who finds himself locked up by mistake, who might
very well have been a bank manager,or simply a poor idiot. There s cven
theprisoner who finds a transitory systemization in prison, whosces prison
s a passing accident (as shortas possibl) ora form of social assistance. |
have seen people gt themselves arrested just before Christmas because at

Christmas they give Christmas dinner (you think thats

othing?), o to get
properly cleaned up, or o be cured, because for many of them there is no
other way to get treatment—and there is not one but hundreds of such

Butther

inother prison population, those who pride themselves

in being “outlaws’, in being able 10 attack determined structures of the
State their own way. This populaton is bviously not prepared to play the
‘game of participation, so willstand out and be subjected to vry precise
why part
it separates. Not all are sble o paricipae a the same level noteverybody

separation. Tha

tory prisonis a prison of division, because

accepts a dialogue with power. And the greater the participation, the greater
the number of signals that come from i, the more the sectorialisation of the

prison world becomes isible.

a
Much remains to be said concerning the question of accepting a
relationship with the prison institution. 1 am o going into all tha today.
having done it many times inthe past. But It take the question of parole
“This s not something tha can be summed up s a direet eltionship between.
prison and prisoner. Before parole i granted there is a whole procedure
called treatment’ (the choice of the word is no coincidence, in tht the
prisoner is seen as apatient). The treatment s a sries of decisions that he
or she must make one afer the other It begins with a meeting with the
peychiatis, then there i taking a job inside the prison and that depends
on your not having had any problems inside. soit's something tha goes on
for two orthree years. That's it,you have to choose the road of bargaining
with power well in advance. A legitimate choice, for goodness sake, but

always in the optic of that desistence for which one says, ‘I don't feel like

carrying on. I'm not damaging anyone and I'm going to take this road
Wel. ifthe guard behaves in certain way I retend to ook at the wall that
seems tohave got very interestng all o sudden if there’ a problem, '
not saying arevolt, buta simple problem, I stay in the cell and don't o out
intothe yard. Allhis involes a choice, thereis no clearalternative between
detention and parole. that's pure theory. in practice it’s not like that
Basically this problem exists for prisoners who have a coherence as
revolutionaries. But prisoners in general, who find themselves inside for
their own reasons and have never laimed any “political’ identty no matter
how rarifed his concept hasbecome, scethings i terms of the practicabilty
ofa choice and do not pose themselves such problems even remoely. They
have their own personal history and the way it fits in with what the law
offers them. This finerary takes two of three years, i's notsomething that
happens in a day.

OF cours, the prison of the future, which I believe will be far

‘more open than the present one, willreceive more attention so will be far

8
more repressive and mor closed. totally closed. lowards the minority that
does no accept bargaining, does not want (o partiipate and refuses to
even discuss anyihing. Thatis why I have spoken of therelatonship between
participation and division, relationship that is anything but obvious at
first sight. Things that seemed so far apart turm out 0 be close together:
participation creats division.

So whatto do? We have oftenasked ourselves this question s far
as prison is concemed. I've just read ltle pampble. 1 hardly ever read
anything about prison on principl, because it disgusts me to read these
tents that o on and on aboutt. But. as | had been asked by some comrades,
Laccepted a “family’ discussion, let's say. So. 1 was saying. I read this
‘pamphlet. 1t was published by the comades of Nautilus publications and
contined anabolitonist text on prison, then an aticle by Riccardo d'Este*.
Iwas interesting, even though | did't understand exactly what he wanted
10say. T mean, whether e was making acritique of aboliionism or nt, o
‘whetherhe could't manage to do o completly.given that be was presentng
this pamphlet. But there’s something 1 don' lke in this text and that s
what I want tosay. and when | see Riccardo 'l el him. He condemned.
absolutely and without appeal, those who have theorised or carried out
attacks against prisons inthe past. This judgement seems wrong to me. He
says thi... bear in mind that Riccardo i a very good comrade whom you
perhaps got to know at one of is conferences here in Bologna... e says
“Theseattacks were nothing, they were senscless. in factthey have builtthe
insteffcientism
What

prisons anyway. But come on, dear man! You who are 1

in everything else, you say something that is eminently efficientis

does ‘they builtthe prisons anyway’ mean? Perhaps anything we do, when
it doesn't produce the desired result, or doesn't reach the desired goal,
isn'tworth a dann? Sorry if put this so simplisically, but the question of

the attack on prisons s of particular interest o me. But no! Prisons must

2
be attacked. That doesn't mean (o say that once it has been decided to
attack them they willalldisappear. Or that because we have atacked ther
once we can say we are happy and will do nothing else to destroy them. 1
remember the attempt to destroy the prison of Sollcciano when it was
being built. The attempt was made, but the prisons of Sollicciano vere
built all the same. But what does that mean, that the attack was pointless?
Idon'tthink so. Because i we wereto come o the conclusion that Riccardo
id, perhaps by a slip of the pen, as Id lke to think. we must condemn
everything we do. Because nothing that revolutionary and anarchist
comrades dois guaranteed to btain the desird resultand rachits goalin
absolute. Ifthat were the case we would really all be at peace.

Conceming Riccardo ' Este’s text,it should be said that T don't

justknow his ideas from reading the pamphleton prison, but also through
having spoken o him. Riccardois a fascinating person, but when you lsten
o him, orread him, you do well o separate what he writs from what he
says. the wheat from the chaff, o see how much i valid and how much s
the fuscinating way he says i,

Iy opinion, a separation ofthe kind he makes on the question

of a possible interaction between reform and extremism doesn't exist. In

realty there are not struggles that are reformist and others that are
revolutionary. Its the way that you cary out a strugele thatcounts. As we.
said earle,the way you behave with others counts great deal: i behave
with my companion in acertain way. am L a reformist or a revolutionary?
No, these are not the alenatives, it s more question of seeing whether |
am a bastard o not. And if | make a distinction between my way of being

‘and my way of acting, my way of being inthe intimacy of my relations with

those close to me and my ‘political’ way of appearing, then the distinction
‘aboutreformism becomes valid. I i absurd totalk about these concepis in

absiract,
The individual must make up his or her mind s to what their
basic choices are ineverything they do. If no, ifthey are continually copping
out,they willclearly berevolutionarics in word alone,or ey might conquer
the world. butn order todo what? To enact a new theatre of Greek tragedy.
“The above distnction only exiss in the world of the politician, that of the
spectace, representation in Schopenhauer'ssense of the term).Ifve reduce.
the world to this representaion (don't let's forget that Schopenhaer lent
his binoculars 0 a Prussian officer n order for him 1o take betier aim and
shaot the insurgents: this i the man who talks to s of the ‘world as
representation’, ot the one thatsome anarchist readers have dreamed of
fromhis book) then, yes.it s possble o make adisincton between reform
and revolution, but agan this is chatter. These abstract deas don't existin
reality. There is the individual, with everything he o she relaes to, and
through thisrelating contributes o ransforming reality. so you can't make
precise distnctions about th things they do. All the theoreicaldistinction
between reform and revolution s not as significant a was thought in the
past
Now few words o the question of eficientism.

“This is a question that people work out for themselves. I come
from a culture and a way of thinking that could be defined effcintis,
was born in an efficientist atmosphere, I come from the school of
efficentism, Then I convinced myself that this gets you nowhere, L convinced
mysel.. theoretically, maybe inpractice I am till the same, buta eastin
theory I can sce the difference, that not al the actions one carries out
necessarily oblain instant results. That is fundamental, It i important to
understand thi for many reasons, irstof all because thereis tendency
especially among revolutionarics to present the bill, and let's not forget
thatrevolutionariesare greedy. they are exacting creditors.. They are very

quick torig up the ghigliottine, they don't wait for anyone, thisis something

st
terrible. In fact, what is the ghigliotine of the revolutionary? I is the
consequence ofeffcienism, because it reaches a ertan point then begins
to...read something recently concerning the stupor caused by of Lenin's
writings. Many are shocked because Lenin ordered the pasant proprictors
o be Killed. Thatdidn’t surprise me at all The Killng of peasant proprictors
s quie nommal when done in the name of revolutionary efficientism. Either
one s surprised ateverything t do witheffcientism, orone docsn' wonder
at reading something of the sort because it is quite normal. a logical
consequence of the choices made previously. If o wans to reach given
abjectives, there are certan coss, tht i the concept of efficientism.

“The question of eficientism concerns how 1o set out a sruggle

corectly, for example the strugglea

inst he prison institutions that hang

over each and every one of us to s ertain extent. My grandfather used o
‘We have abrick each’, he used to

say, ‘We all own a brick oftheprison’
say. Not that he understood much about prison, but it was well known
Sicilian proverb at the time. S0, et make pison become part of our whole
intervention i reality ininermediary struggles. The ltter arethestruggles
that we carry out without expecting any grea results because they will
probablybe recuperatd, or becausethey arecircumscribed.Ihese struggles
areset outcorectly however, they always give some kind of resultina way
that s different o efficientism. | mean, ifsocial sruggles are properly set
outthey reproduce themselves. And how can they b set out roperly? First
ofall by geting away from the question ofthedelegate and the expecation
of any outside support: in ther words, by slfmanaging them. Then, they.
abviously shouldn't becarried outin accordance withtheprecise deadlines
that are fixed in the laboratorcs of povwer,so they must start off from &
different way of seeing things, from a logic of permanent conflctuality.
These two concepts selfmanagement and permanent conflctualiy, are then

combined with a third: the absence of the need for immediate visibility.

B
The effectiveness of a struggle does not come from a ulopian vision of
reality. but from the real possibility f seting it out i a way tha liminates
any possibility of s being transformed into quantity and geting quanttative
resuls

Thisis possible. I fact, if we think about . it i aways possible.
‘We often make the mistake of wantng to circumscribe the strugele in order
1o b better understood. By intersening in something specific such a the
factory for example it is casy t see the characterstcs: the struggle for
wage ncreases, holding on o jobs. fighting polution at work, and so many.
other things. and we don't see how prison can fit in o that, becanse e
ik tha people wouldn't understand us as wel if we were to widen the
argument

Initselfthestrugele, let's

ina factory. i ahvays an intermediate
one. How might such strugele end up? At best one would each the orginal
objective, the workers would save thei jobs, then everything would be
recuperated. The struggle is recuperated. the bosses find an altemative o
redundancy money. they find an alterntive to dangerous work,they find
further investment o improve conditions, etc. This kind of situation satisies
s, and in fact it s al right from a revolutionary pointof view i the iniial
conditions of timing, permanent conflictualiy, selfmanagement of the
strugele and everything else, were maintined throughout. Butitis no onger
satisfying f inthe name of eficiency. we prevent ourselves from including
prison in it Because for me the question of prison must be present in all
the struggles we carry out like any other aspect of the revolutionary
discourse. And if we think abou i it is possble to do something of the
Kind. When we don't, tis only i the name of effciency. because we think
that we won'tbe understood o that we might seem dungerous, o e prefer

10 avoid the question of prison.
Afew words now on the aboliionist position. Bear in mind that
am not al tha well prepared on the subject, first of all because I don't
agree with the abolitonist position s | understand it so 1 might miss
something out. I wha say turns ut o e lacking, well, corrct me. 1 was
saying, don'tagree with the abolitonist positon, not because I want prisons,
of course, but because I don't agree with 2 positon that wanis to abolish
part of a whole that cannot be dissected. I other words. | don'tthink that
s possible to talk about abolition as opposed toattack. I other words,
don'tthink that s posible to propose platform to bolish one aspect of
a context tha i organicaly inseparabl. I don't agree with proposals to
abolish the judiciary. because for me such proposals don't make senses or

to:abolish the police for that matter. That doesn't mean that I'min favour of

the judiciary orthe police. I the same way, don't ageee with the bolition
of the Stat, only it destruction. And not only do | agree to that but am
ready 0 et now towards such an end, whenever that s, evenifitis extremely.
improbable inthe shor term,. I mean, Lam ready to do something, and can
discuss what o do interms of atack against thi or that specific aspect of
the State. and so also against prison

I other words, as I s it the problem nceds o be upturned. Itis
nota question of abolishing apart of the Stae,such as prison forexample
but of destroying the State, obviously not completely and all at once,
otherwise we would put it off o infinity. It would be like following that
famous dirction n history tha is moving towards anarchy in any case, so
we would end up doing nothing. waiting fo this anarchy to come about by
itself, On the contrary. I am prepared to do something today,right avay,

even against a part of the total instiution *State’, so also against prison,

the police, the judiciary, or any other of the essential components of the

State. This i the concept that 1 wanted to make clear.
What do these ideas actually cortespond to? Let’s spend another
couple of minutes,don't getrestless, L swear I won'tbore you much longer
1 you think sbout it carefully,the idea of the abolition of prison comes
from quite a precise theoretcal context, which frankly I don't know, but
someting 1do know bt more about was born alongside it In America at
the present time 2 number of universites are working on the question of
the transformation of democracy within general philosophical ideas, but
alsoin sociological theory. There are various American thinkers, the most
famous of whom is Nozik, who have examined the concept of a
communitarian ife without sanctions, without sentences and without any.
instrumentsof repression. Why arethey taking upthis problem? Obviously
because these enlightened people realise that the democratic structure a5
we know it cannot g0 on forlong and they will have o find another soluton.
They need t look and see how communities could emerge without crtain
elements that are natural to the exstence of the State such as prison, the
police, State control. ec.. This debate is not something margina, it s at
the centre of political and philosophical ideas in American universities.
And i my opinion abolitonism, correct me if I'm wrong, could b taken
up by this movement. But thisis question tha needs 1o be gone nto by
someone who knows more about it than me. | don't want to say any more
on the subject.

Lets say that this kind of problem, especially n theorists like
Norik—therearealso thers but thir names escape meaithe moment —is
an indication of some of the practical needs of the management of povwer
Evidently the historical model of democracy. for example Tocqueville’s
book. is no longer acceptable. That is not the democracy we're talking
about, Otherstructures are required oday. Take country like China, How
il the future democracy of China be able to base iself on modelsuch s

Tocqueville’s? How could a parliament with twenty-six thousand members

55
function, for example? lmpossible. They must find another way. And they.
are working i tha direction. We can also see few signals here inlaly. in
a diffeent sense. Institutional transformations, as they say. that are the
expression of the generalised malaise of democracy: But also men ofeters
who s ar from democratic cover- ups such as Foucaulthave given thir
contribution to the perfectionment of prison and a rationalisation of the
institutional structure.

Concerning Foucaul, we could say that, at leas s far as I know
given that know his work on the history of madness best, wo basiclines
Of thought un through his work: one rlats toovercoming and the other to
mainaining a process in act. The resul i that this theoreician always
leaves something ill-defined. In all his proposal. even that concerning
homosexuality. scen as both diversity and normality. it s never lear what
he actually opts for. Ambivalence is characterstic of this thinker, and not
only him but all those who are rying to keep themselves on an even keel.
Basicaly.for him the prison question concerns an instrument whose use
he is unsure about, he would like to do away with it but docs not have
anything els 1o suggest other than puttng it in parenthesi. In fact at
certain point, he gives the example of the nave des folles, which was a
prison, asylum, orphanage and resthorme fo old prosttues, al atonce. He
writes that the nave auxfolles was realised n a few days, that it akes very.
litle time o realise it. At a time when society was expellng individuals
who are differen from certain ctes (I'm not talking about homosexuals) it
putthem outside the walls. And these individuals, not knowing wha to do,
migrated from own o own. s0at given moment they were taken and put
onaship,the ship of mad peaple. Thisship stared t sl from port o port
because nobody wanted it A ship perpetually in movement, Atthat moment
prison wascreated, as wel s the asylum,the orphanage and kst homes for

old prostitutes, because at that time society could no longer tolerate their

6
presence. Certain social functions had disappeared: that of the madman,
who in medieval society was seen as one touched by God, and that ofthe
beggar, who in Catholic counties was the object o charity, the basis of
Catholic hristianity. don't forget. Withthe development o Protestanism,
the beggar becomes an objectof captue, 5o had to be held separate. When
socity can no longer use him, the figure of the beggar becomes superfluous.
He disappears a the receiver of charity 1o become prisoner.Today. this
society no longer needs prison,the “thing” prisoner must disappear. How
do you do that? By taking a ship and putting all the prisoners on it? But
“the thing’ prisoner does not disappear when the ship becomes a prison. in
the way that the French did with those from the Paris Comune who were
deported: they put ther into pontoons, boats moored at Le Havre, and
people stayed in them for 5 or 6 years, pisonersin floating prison. Now

society no longer needs prisons, as some enlightened social theorists are

saying. so let’s transfer the prisoners to another social institution. That
would be the project seen from the abolitonist pot of view. And here
Foucaull’s discourse tums o perfection.

That's what I wanted tosay. Now lt's come back t the question
of atack for a moment. | am always for the specific attack. The specifi
attack is important, not only for the results that it produces, not only for

the effects it produces, that we can see before our eyes... None of us can

elaimto be functionalist, because if we were to fallinto that contradiction
we wouldn't do anything at all. So, first prisons need to be understood.
because we can't do anything if e don’t understand the reality we want to
fight, Then they have o be made comprehensible o others. Then they need
1o b attacked. There's no other olution. They must be atacked as such.
These attacks contain nothing of the great military operations that some
imagine. I have always thought of these attacks s day out in the country

One saystooneself, I feel hemmed in today, inthis anarchist place, (frankly
Ifind them bit depressing). and I want o go for a walk. Let’s notstay shut
upin his lace, let's go out for a walk'. By that 1 don't mean student.like
atitude, becanse that's stupid, but lts justsay without too much dram:
s always possible o go for a walk in the country and s not bad for your
health.. And without spending too much time discussing things and
transforming day i the country into a kind of crusade againstall oppressors
past, present and future. No, something pleasurable, a day inthe country is
an actvity that must also give us oy but it s lso something specific.

But prisons should also be attacked in the context of the struggle
i general thati, i the course of any struggle that we manage to undertake.
And this s something that we have been saying for sbout en years. No
matter what we are doing. o what we are talking about, we must make
prison a part of i, becanse prison s essental (o any discourse. When e
aretalking sbout lving areas. health, etc. we must ind a way, and there is
one, o include prison in what we are saying. denouncing al atlemps to
muffle it's poential to disturb social pace.

Bear in mind that prison s an clement in movement as we have
scen, it s not something static and finite. Forthe enemy. prison s an clement
of disturbance:They are allaways thinking about what they can do o slve.
the problem of prison. Now, ther problem of prison must become our
problem and we must think about it during the struggles we cary out. i ve
carry them out.

Allthi. of course, while awaiting the next insurrction. Because
in the case of insurrction it will be enough to open up the prisons and
destroy them for ever

Thank you.

B
* Some notes on the Gozzin law.

5,000 comrades were arrested as a consequence of the social
struggles in Italy in the 705 and many other prisoners became
politicised as a consequence of the encounter. Between 1970 and
1971 alone there were about 80 revolts in the prisons. The revolis
inside the prison were strongly supported by comrades outside, and
the Ttalian State was forced to look for a solution through reform-
ing the penal code which unil then had remained practically un-
changed since the era of Mussolini.

With the Prison Reform in 1975 significant changes were intro-
duced, namely an attempt to convert conviction into social work
under strict surveillance in cases of short sentences. At this point
the role of the magistry of surveillance became primary, along with
prison administrative personnel, prison guards, social services and
police department in managing the prisoner’s sentence, no longer
based exclusively on the ‘crime’.

In 1986 the *Gozzini law’ was approved, putting more weight
on the prisoner’s specific political choices and behaviour rather
than simply evidence used during trial. Tn 1980 the “Cossiga de-
cree’ was approved, introducing the character of the collaborator
during prosecution and trals concerning armed struggle. In 1982 a
law on dissociation is approved. in 1987 an even more complex
law concerning collaborators appears. Seen in this context, the
Gozzini law serves to widen the distance between reward and pun-
ishment

Another legal article introduced in that era and still applied
today at the whim of the judge of surveillance, is article 90, a way
of eliminating not only all the benefits of the reforms, but also
basic rights any timethat a prisoner is considered ‘dangerous” (to

5
the State of course): they are only able to enjoy their rights or ben-
efits after an evaluation of the situation and considering the level
of danger presented. In some cases they are held in complete isola-
tion for the whole of their sentence.

The Gozzini law is used to rationalise the situation: 40 to 90
days” per year reduction for good behaviour, social work available
o prisoners also with long convictions, special permits of up to 40
days a year for special reasons, social work, etc.

This trend has been reinforced by law 203/1991 which denies
all benefits included in the Gozzini law to anyone, both social and
political, who won't collaborate.

Then appeared Law 356/1992, introducing the Gozzini Law
art. 18 bis, showing how courts were becoming branches of the
prison system and prison politic influencing judicial matters. Agents
from the Anti-Mafia division are legally authorised to carry out
interrogations without any transcript. This and other articles cur-
tailing prisoners rights are clearly a form of pressure aimed at cre-
ating collaborators.
Prison is the most direct, brutal expression of power, and like
power it must be destroyed, it cannot be abolished progres-
sively. Anyone who thinks they can improve it now in order to
destroy it in the future will forever be a captive of it

The revolutionary project of anarchists is to struggle along
with the exploited and push them to rebel against all abuse
and repression, o also against prison. What moves them is
the desire for a better world, better lfe with dignity and ethic,
where economy and politics have been destroyed. There can
be no place for prison in that world

£~ Publahod n 2008 by Bephan: Edtons, Lonon, UK
(=7 Disbuted nNorth America by Quver sito
2 P05 St G oh 6061 U5A