ABSTRACT
As the recent doctrine has shown, the phenomenon of the prison boom has migrated from the United States to Europe, in less than a decade. To date, prison overcrowding is characterized by its endemic and structural nature in most European countries. The most effective judicial response to this phenomenon has been provided to date by the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. The phenomenon of prison overcrowding, in its European dimension, is therefore an excellent point of view of the ability of the European case law to produce responses that form a common narrative and force Member States, through substantive and procedural obligations, positive and negative obligations, to renegotiate the policies of protection of prisoners. In this analytical perspective, Italy stands out as one of the countries most affected by the phenomenon of prison overcrowding, with one peculiarity. In Italy this phenomenon has historically been accompanied by the absence of a general judicial remedy capable of eliminating the violation in progress and compensating for the damage suffered. As we will try to prove, it was only thanks to the European impulse that the dimension of detention was finally perceived as a perspective of rights and remedies in order to protect these rights in the Italian system. We will thus attempt to trace the lines of the Italian process of adaptation (and resistance) to the European case law on the protection of prisoners' rights. This process is not only normative, but also characterized by a critical reflection and a radical change in the specific normative ideology, which has so far supported the legal argumentation of Italian surveillance judges.
