On August 7, 2022, taking advantage of the shift change of prison staff, three young inmates of the Beccaria Juvenile Penal Institute in Milan surprised their cellmate while he was sleeping and subjected him to sexual violence and repeated torture: abuse carried out for two hours without anyone noticing. A few months later, on Christmas Day, seven boys climb the fence and escape: revolt breaks out in the prison.
The Beccaria is no longer the IMP model it once was: this is what the “Boys Inside” report reports, made public by the Antigone association in 2022. The renovations underway for 16 years have led to the closure of an entire wing. of the institute, including the women's department; the remaining areas are overcrowded; there is no stable director; educators are few in number; social services struggle to meet the needs of the prisoners in their care.
Juvenile justice actors working with children warn that there is a need to review educational intervention and question punitive logic. Children who express their suffering talk about the violence they have suffered and experienced, as long as they are willing to listen. It is precisely through these stories that we obtain the first clues to trace the chain of social reintegration in juvenile prisons which shows more than one structural defect.
The investigation was carried out by Selena Frasson And Claudio Rosa thanks to the support of the Amici di Roberto Morrione association as part of the twelfth edition of Roberto Morrione Prize for Investigative Journalism under 30 years old. Giuseppe Naselli contributed to the work of creating the illustrations.