Women Prisoners in Italy.

The article compares the governmental care of men, minors, and women prisoners in Italy. Illiteracy is decreasing among the inmates, but only very few of the women are given the opportunity to learn to read and write. The statistics of the sick show that a sick man has a better chance to recover, that fewer die and that disease is more easily detected in men than in women. The men are granted special privileges when their conduct is satisfactory. The penitentiaries for women, excepting the one at Trani, are run under the lease system. The women convicts are leased out to some religious order. Under the Sister Superior and her sisters the sentence is carried out according to the regulations of the penal code, while the government makes only a slight effort to control the treatment, the nourishment and the exploitation of the women. The prisons are large industrial plants with an arbitrary, all powerful director and task master at the head, namely, the Sister Superior. Some compensation is allowed to the workers, after they have worked without any remuneration during six months, which is considered their apprenticeship.