Prison, ideas on the run that change lives

Everyone needs work, but perhaps even more for them. When you spend years in prison, getting out is certainly a joy, which, however, is also very scary. What to do? How to present yourself to the world? Out there it’s difficult to welcome you with open arms, difficult to find a space, with that past that clutters.

It is a widespread problem, which involves all ex-convicts and «Runaway ideas» was born for this: a cooperative active in the “Cantiello e Gaeta” Penitentiary Institute in Alessandria, committed to creating job opportunities both while the prisoners are serving their sentence and, above all, when they leave prison.

Work – various studies and scientific publications say so – is a powerful tool for breaking down recidivism: once out of prison, three out of four inmates commit crimes, and go back behind bars. Creating professional training opportunities is one of the best ways to activate a real change process.

If you go by Escape of Flavors, the shop in Corso Roma 52 in Alessandria, set up by the cooperative «Idee in fuga», all the possibilities are well understood. Here prisoners and ex-prisoners sell what they have learned to make: Maresciallo taralli, Maskalzone panettone, chocolate bars and the many beers produced through the birth of the first hop garden of a prison, 400 square meters and 300 plants, where wonderful dinners are organized every year to support the cooperative’s activities in favor of prisoners and their families.

Fulvio Buon Cristiani, a 42-year-old from Turin, works with pride in that shop. After four and a half years of detention it was not easy to start over: «I was towards the end of my sentence when, thank you to art. 21, I was granted an outside job. And it was a very important step for me. When you are inside, you become very habitual, it is difficult to socialize and you end up losing too many points of view: getting out of there requires taking control again».

This work in the workshop gives Fulvio a future perspective that he had never had: «When I was a kid I was a street vendor with my parents, then I worked in restaurants in Rome and in a catering service in Pescia, in Tuscany, but things didn’t go as I would have liked. They put me in jail for attempted extortion.”

Nothing about his life – he says – would change: «If it had gone differently, I wouldn’t be what I would be today. For heaven’s sake, I’d be more careful about some things, I’d improve on others, but even the bad things that happened to me gave me important lessons. I don’t want to back down, I’ve learned to accept my past, ready today to present myself for who I am, with all my history behind me”.

Today he is another person, proud to have become the point of reference for the shop, to have the keys and manage the cash register: «The fact that they gave me the keys was very important for me, a demonstration of trust that got me going again . They hired me and I have a regular salary: without this opportunity who knows how I would have done…. I also have to thank the association Betel, which, when I got out of prison, gave me free living space. For me it was a holy hand. Now I can pay my rent and I can lead a normal life, but it’s not immediate and if I hadn’t received help, I don’t know where I would have ended up. Having a job helps you not to get lost, not to fall where you had already fallen, it helps you get tired during the day and sleep at night».

Fulvio says he is satisfied: «I wish people could see me as an example: if you commit yourself with the right ways, you can get out of it, overcoming what seems insurmountable».

Even if there is some bitterness and Fulvio wants to get rid of some pebbles: «I’m very angry with the state. There is too late justice: if you are wrong it is absolutely right that you pay for what you have done, but the penalty cannot take place too many years later. If I committed a crime when I was 20 and you condemn me for being over 30, in the meantime I could have become another person».

And one of Fulvio’s wishes today is to meet his son, whom he hasn’t seen for years: «I just get excited at the idea. I’m having a psychologist accompany me, I don’t want to make a mistake, I don’t want to cause problems for him or his mother. Sneaking into a life after so many years of absence is tough: I haven’t seen him since he was one year old and today he’s 17. I wish he knew that if one day he wants to see me, I’ll be there, ready to hug him. I have nothing to hide, I don’t want to keep secrets. Over time I learned to kneel, to understand the value of humility. I know what it means to fall and I know how important it is to know how to lend a hand: they did it with me and now I want to do it with the others». And if he had to say thank you, he would say it to his owners: «They are exceptional, more educators than employers. They allowed me to start living again.”