Rehabilitation and dynamic security in the Italian prison: challenges in transforming prison officers’ roles

Drawing on prison officers’ accounts, this article addresses the extent to which the implementation of dynamic security and open cell regime has been successful in reforming Italian prisons. The article, based on a semi-ethnographic research in two prisons, sheds light on how the prison officers’ cope with the new rehabilitation-oriented role. The uniformed staff’s perceptions and experiences of the new regime are analysed, with a focus on the symbolic order produced over the rehabilitation and the effect of the complexity of the prison’s setting. Along with deepening understandings about the humanization of prison security, this article explores how the prison officers’ role and attitudes might impact and shape the idea of rehabilitation.