To break the isolation of prison, aggravated by the pandemic, Sant ‘Egidio distributed gifts to 12. 000 inmates at Christmas, one fifth of the prison population in Italy.

 Just when it seemed that life was slowly back to normal, with the resumption of some treatment activities and with a still timid presence of the outside world, prisons are closing again due to the new wave of contagions. This means isolation, loneliness, and fear for the health of the loved ones. This separation is painfully felt especially at Christmas.
Thus, the Community of Sant'Egidio thought of a gesture that could reach as many prisoners as possible: we managed to reach 12,000 out of a total of 54,000. More than one in 5 prisoners received a gift and more than 3,500 received a meal with typical holiday dishes in the prisons of Lazio, Abruzzo, Liguria, Piedmont, Sicily, Tuscany, Umbria, and Campania.
Prison is a place of extreme marginality, but it cannot and must not be an island where no one enters; it is a periphery beyond the periphery, full of peripheral people waiting to be visited and welcomed.
What do we hope for next year? Undoubtedly a reduced use of imprisonment in favuor of alternative measures, following the trend of recent years that have seen an increase in the number of those who serve their sentences with alternative measures to prison. The Community of Sant'Egidio is committed to welcoming and supporting families, so that everyone can be given a new chance to overcome their mistakes and not to fall into the stigma that too often locks in a cage those people who would have the right to start their lives over.