Made in prison: Italian female prisoners create bags with recycled mat

“Made In Carcere” (Made In Prison) is a project initiated by Luciana Delle Donne, a top manager in the financial world who left her job a few years ago, determined to dedicate her skills to a different end. Her dream was to work in the field of sustainability and support disadvantaged people.
Thanks to her enormous passion she was able to create a tailor workshop where prisoners cut bags out of recycled and waste material. But “Made In Carcere” is a lot more than that. It is a sustainable development model that is very different from those promoted in the financial world where Luciana came from. And is a real rehabilitation for the detainees involved.
Prisoners are usually confined to their cells 22 hours a day. The cells are “three paces by two paces” with one single bed and one bunk bed in them. If one of the three prisoners wants to stretch her legs walking those three paces, the other two need to lie on the beds because there is only a very narrow passage between the two beds. They have 2 hours to go out into a small court with very high walls. Many prisoners try to kill themselves, others as for “the therapy”: strong psychotropic drugs.
“Prison like this” as one prisoner stated, “just makes you a worse person, it doesn’t rehabilitate you. And then, into this desolation, a sewing shop arrived where, in addition to a job, we learn the rules of civil conduct.”
Universities, trade fairs, supermarkets, and even festivals are now ordering Made In Carcere bags. “Above all”, says Luciana Delle Donne, “it is also a victory for Italian style because the product we have developed is truly a quality article.”
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