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Roberto Cornelli, Full Professor of Criminology at the University of Milan

For several years, I have been conducting research in prisons. However, unlike many of my colleagues, my focus is primarily on the prison police rather than the inmates. When asked why, I often respond with an analogy: if I were studying hospitals and sought to understand how patients are treated, I could not overlook the role of doctors, nurses, and support staff, their perception of their work, and how they carry it out on a daily basis. Similarly, anyone seeking to study the prison system must develop a deeper understanding of the professionals who operate in every corner of this environment and whose actions largely determine the quality of service provided to both inmates and society as a whole. This is particularly important because prison officers are not like other institutional staff: they are entrusted with maintaining order and security within correctional facilities, even through the use of force if necessary. Studying them also means examining how order is upheld within prisons, the democratic constraints that regulate their authority, and the broader at what price.

It is important to acknowledge that, in Italy today, prison police officers are experiencing what can be described as a crisis of professional identity. The overlap of two seemingly divergent duties – the custodial role, which often forms the foundation of their professional identity, and the rehabilitative-treatment role – has become increasingly difficult to reconcile. This is what is defined as a role conflict. While many officers still manage to integrate these two functions, narratives depicting prisons as battlefields (where order must be ensured through an all-out struggle against the enemy) are spreading rapidly. These narratives reinforce custodial or openly punitive approaches to prison management.

The situation is further complicated by the widespread feeling among officers that they are ignored and left alone to deal with the many challenges that arise in their work. Their efforts often go unrecognized, leading to growing frustration and deep dissatisfaction. This disconnect from institutional leadership fosters a sense of isolation that negatively affects their perception of professional recognition: they feel judged no matter what they do and claim that even if they were to perform their duties well, no one would notice. The distance is also evident in terms of the clarity of rules and responsibilities, creating role ambiguity: officers are often uncertain about which procedures to follow to avoid mistakes, and when problems arise, they do not know who should address them or whom to turn to. Institutional delegitimization, along with punitive orientations and the quality of interpersonal relationships, plays a crucial role in explaining variations in the use of force among prison police officers.

Given this situation, at least as it is perceived and described by the officers themselves, the risk of a professional culture emerging that seeks to strengthen group cohesion in militarized and defensive terms is quite high. In fact, this is already more than a mere risk. Evidence of this can be seen in the way the prison police are represented – in promotional videos, official calendars, industry fairs, political discourse, and even institutional events – as a paramilitary organization dedicated exclusively to the use of weapons and the neutralization of adversaries. This narrative starkly contrasts with the reality of officers’ daily work, which is characterized by the absence of weapons and the need to establish effective channels of communication with detainees.

This portrayal of the prison police reflects a penal ideology that is far removed from constitutional principles but closely aligned with a neo-punitive and prison-centric political-criminal orientation, one that resists any push for humanization and the recognition of prisoners’ rights while catering to staff expectations of impunity. To the extent that, to mention only the most pressing current issues, the crime of torture is viewed as an obstacle, the right to maintain personal relationships as a concession, passive resistance as a criminal offense, and legal immunity for officers as a necessity.

“Those who only observe the surface of things may find it strange that crime repression itself is considered among the factors that contribute to crime; yet certain forms of repression do, in fact, help generate crime and educate and refine criminals”. These words, written by the criminologist and politician Napoleone Colajanni in his monumental Criminal Sociology (1889), highlight the longstanding connection between recidivism and the conditions under which sentences are carried out. Over 130 years ago, it was already clear that detention conditions could fuel a convict’s resentment toward society, turning prison into “a true normal school of crime”.

It is crucial to return to this fundamental lesson on the criminogenic effects of a detention system based on repression and humiliation in order to restore the deeper meaning of prison work. The role of the prison system is not to punish (punishment is already inherent in the fact of incarceration itself) but rather to offer opportunities, persistently and relentlessly, for individuals to imagine a different life for themselves.

The contribution was published in PQM-Il Riformista on 14th February 2025, under the title “Prison Police: The Difficult Balance Between Security and Role Crisis”

The research on the prison police cited in this contribution is available and can be freely downloaded from the publications page.