Naples, from the darkness of 41 bis to the degree in prison with 110 cum laude: “Thanks to the study, I’m not crazy”

I was locked up in prison for a quarter of a century. The studio gave me the tools to change. Pierdonato Zito, a 63-year-old man, spent 30 in prison, 8 in 41-bis. Behind him he has a complex life and a heavy criminal career. His is a difficult story that has become an example of resocialization, of those who pay for their mistakes by trying to remain human. Pierdonato the first graduate of the Federico II Penitentiary University Pole of Secondigliano, doctor in Social Sciences with 110 cum laude. We meet him just back from work.

Where he works?
To the social policy sector of the Municipality of Succivo as a volunteer. I am in external criminal execution under the semilibert regime.

How many years have you spent in prison?
A quarter of a century. With previous imprisonments I exceed thirty years. I know so much, but not the length of the detention to change you, but how you use the time. I have three children, I left them children and they became men. They suffered a lot. Before, in the period in which I had become unavailable, they followed me in the various apartments that I often changed. Then my son fell ill with leukemia and my arrest also came. An ordeal began for them, between hospitals and prisons. I’ve seen them grow up in interviews. The 41-bis period was even tougher: the encounters behind the glass, the inability to touch them, the stress I saw in their eyes.

Tell us about the experience of 41-bis.
If you spend eight years in solitary confinement, you take off all roles, you are no longer a parent, husband or child. The reflection of the walls in my eyes was the only thing I had. The small ceiling window was not enough to see the sky, to breathe the air, to hear the sounds and smell the world. In those years I saw bloodthirsty hitmen, well-known criminals and prominent figures of organized crime commit suicide or go mad. Reading was also limited, I was entitled to three books: one religious, the penal code and one of your choice to be returned as soon as finished. Those in prison always use metaphors and I think of my detention as the desert where my oasis was reading and I was denied.

How did you start studying?
I visited many prisons, then I returned to the Secondigliano prison where I had entered for the first time in 1995. Here I met Professor Antonio Belardo. Ours is the story of two humanity who cross paths in prison and change the course of events. The director gave us the opportunity to use a cell and we transformed a detention space into a training space. Then the time for a permit matured and Belardo invited me to his house. Now I live in this house.

And the university?
They had opened the Pup (University penitentiary center, ed) of Federico II and gave me the tools to be a citizen. It doesn’t happen often, but in prison I received the coordinates to understand the company. Then I was lucky enough to meet a magistrate, Dr. Di Giglio, who believed me and invested in me granting me the benefits.

And so came his degree in Social Sciences, with 110 cum laude. What did you deal with in his thesis?
Through the method of auto-ethnography, I thought back to my prison experience asking myself: can study, in the penitentiary field, affect the decision-making processes of individuals? My story has become a subject of sociological analysis. Sociology has helped me understand my actions, making me study crime as a social phenomenon and therefore I have done nothing but analyze myself and my past. I owe this thesis to many people, but primarily to the volunteers who made me remain human in prison. Without them I would have dried up, like so many others I would have held a grudge against society. I was without tools and the studio provided them to me.

What do you recommend to young people?
The first time I got out of prison, I was hosted in a high school to tell 120 young people about my experience. This has enormous preventive value. If at 17 I had had the opportunity to talk to a lifer, I would never have made any mistakes. I am originally from Montescaglioso, in the province of Matera, and a cultural association will publish my thesis to disseminate it to young people. I am proud that, in a place where my name is linked to events that are anything but pleasant, my words today can help young people.

What do you feel like saying to society instead?
I entered prison at 35 and I partially got out at 62 thanks to the study. To live locked up without going crazy I invented life as life passed, I fought not to become dark in the dark, mud in mud, I studied. The university transforms detention into a path of growth and this means applying the Constitution which provides for re-education. Prison cannot be infantilizing but it must be empowering, because if you are treated like a silly schoolboy and not valued you are stuck in the same circuit for years, forever.

28 October 2022 | 07:57

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