Università Roma Tre

The law cannot be analysed, studied, including using only the categories of the positive right itself. Law and society are intimately connected and mutually dependent. Each legal notion or concept requires different perspectives of analysis. Society pre-exists the law, conditions it, but it is also conditioned by it. Law is in itself a social phenomenon. Law must be studied and analyzed in connection with historical, social, political, economic and cultural facts and data. The course will follow a systemic scientific approach. A look will be given priority to the highly topical issues of immigration, effectiveness of human rights system and criminal justice. The final part of the course will be dedicated to punishment; its normative function as opposed to its social function. During the course the main sociological theories of punishment will initially be retraced, starting from the theses of Durkheim to the most recent abolitionist theories. The contemporary penal system on a global scale has chosen prison as its main penalty. Prison, more than any other punishment, reveals its nature and its explicit and implicit function. During the course the students will investigate the prison institution and the history of its introduction into the punishment system. In the last decades in Italy, Europe and the USA, the trends of imprisonment have not followed crime rates in a causal relationship. Statistical data, organizational and economic models, selectivity of the system, legal culture of prison operators and the surveillance judiciary will be analyzed, also in order to understand what are the complex causes of the growth or decrease in prison rates. A final attention will be taken at the public representation of the criminal system and prison by the media and how media influence the law and the judges.

1) Sociologia del diritto di Giuseppe Campesi, Luigi Pannarale, Ivan Populizio (Mondadori Education, 2017).
2) Carcere e fabbrica. Alle origini del sistema penitenziario di Dario Melossi, Massimo Pavarini (Il Mulino, 2018)
3) Bisogna avere visto. IL carcere nella riflessione degli antifascisti a cura di Patrizio Gonnella, Dario Ippolito (Gli Asini, 2019 in via di pubblicazione)