The EUI’s Secretary General Marco del Panta signed a letter of intent on 12 November with Silvia Costa, Italy’s Special Government Commissioner for the Recovery of the Former Santo Stefano/Ventotene Prison, and Gerardo Santomauro, the mayor of the municipality of Ventotene.
Stefano Campagnolo, Director of the National Library in Rome and Alessandra Vittorini, Director of the Fondazione Scuola dei beni e delle attività culturali, also attended.
The three entities will join forces for the creation and coordination of a network of archival and research institutions to promote research on the history of criminal justice reform in Europe with respect to human rights.
The letter of intent foresees academic, cultural and training activities to be carried out at eventual participating institutions, but also in the municipality of Ventotene.
Ventotene, and more specifically the island of Santo Stefano, is the site of the abandoned prison of Santo Stefano, one of the first prisons built according to Jeremy Bentham’s model of the ‘panopticon’.
Photo: Abandoned prison of Santo Stefano, by Stefano Batistini (Shutterstock)