by
Stefania Tallei

In Italy

Drug addicts

The drug addicts live imprisonment with great difficulty because they are used to living in a disorderly, unstructured manner. For these persons, on the other hand, prison could, paradoxically, represent the possibility of regaining an normal way of life, with regular meals and a place to sleep. They are the most isolated among the prisoners, and frequently their family ties are scant or lost. For this reason they do not receive packages of clothing or edibles, and frequently they have no money. Many of them are HIV positive or sick with AIDS. A state of uncertainty and fear frequently accompanies the alternating periods of imprisonment and freedom, when they go back on the street.

The extreme difficulty of planning a "normal" future comes from the awareness of a total absence of chances to get a job. The majority of these inmates carry with them stories of great emotional and cultural deprivation. We are speaking of "young people," i.e., persons who are relatively young, who frequently have not even earned a primary school diploma. Some of them lived their early years in prison together with mothers, or have had the experience of juvenile detention centres. Still others have grown up between life in the institution and on the street.