Vittorio Sassi, PhD student in Criminology, Bocconi University, Milan, visits the Department of Criminology for a guest lecture.
Sassi describes his research in the following way:
"My research investigates life imprisonment by posing the question of whether we can regard it as “a new death penalty”: I inquire whether arguments that have led to the abolition of capital punishment in Europe can be employed to limit or eradicate life-long incarceration. I believe this question is of great relevance, in a time when lifers’ populations are increasing throughout Europe and life sentences allow greater compressions of human rights (e.g., limiting possibilities to access parole). The traditional ECtHR approach based on “the right to hope” (Vinter v UK) has already appeared ineffective to many: rather paradoxically, increased protection of human rights has not stopped harsher life imprisonment from thriving (van Zyl Smit and Appleton, 2016).
I combine historical, philosophical, and criminological approaches in the hope of providing a fresh perspective to penal reform. I utilise the history of death penalty abolitionism and life imprisonment in Italy as my case study and entry point into the subject. From a theoretical standpoint, I resort to a Foucauldian framework to understand the constituent elements and implications of life imprisonment, seen as a combination of biopolitical and necropolitical power. I ground my considerations in statistical data on life imprisonment/parole admission and interviews with lifers and parole board commissioners."
Important information before the visit
As we have limited places, we would like people working outside the Department of Criminology to pre-register by emailing the seminar organiser Christopher Collstedt. Please state which seminar you want to attend, how many places you want to book and whether you are interested in taking part in any documentation.
