Lo stigma dei reietti sull'istituzione penitenziaria

Prison as an institution is the center of Valeria Verdolini's The Rejected Institution (2022), which is commented on in this article. An important contribution that explores issues that the prison literature has never dug as much as necessary. The author, sharing and appreciating Verdolini's effort, recommends preserving the heuristic capacity of the comprehensive notion of "total institution", proposed at the time by E. Goffman, and further investigating the passive form of the adjective associated by Verdolini to penitentiary institution: if it is "rejected", it means that it has been rejected, by an external agent, who is responsible for the stigma that from the inmate population pours itself on the institution that look after it.