ABSTRACT
The hostility of the GDR state towards religion and the churches has certainly forced' the secularization of punishment and rehabilitation. During the reunification process, the main Christian churches were reestablished, thereby obtaining a number of legal privileges and assuming a number of obligations in prisons as well as in the wider realm of social care. The term pastoral care' was replaced with the term spiritual care'. Contrary to what legal approaches or Weberian interpretations suggest, one cannot simply consider pastoral care as a religious presence in the organized modernity and spiritual care as a postmodern approach. As a reaction to the fear of terrorist violence in the 1970s, the Italian state reinforced its police force and made it more aware of the potential for preventing such violence within the prison population. One major reform affected prison law in 1986, with the introduction of the legge Gozzini, whose name derives from an independent left-wing senator who promoted its content.
