Bars on the Windows, Laughter Between the Lines
"It’s beautiful." Once a year since 2015, BambiniSenzasBarre, an Italian nonprofit organization whose name translates
to "children without bars," has organized these soccer matches inside dozens of prisons across Italy.
15, 2017
MILAN — The 5-year-old boy chased his father around the concrete soccer court, his feathery hair falling over his eyes.
"They feel guilty about something they didn’t commit." A day after the match in Milan, the families of about two dozen inmates
entered the exercise yard at Secondigliano prison, a maximum-security facility in the suburbs of Naples, for another game.
An Italian nonprofit organizes soccer matches inside the country’s prisons in
an effort to foster healthy relationships between inmates and their children.
"We have to break the pattern." Working with the prisoners, Gallon tries to create environments where fathers
and children are interacting directly without mothers around — a rarity in visits at men’s prisons.
Nicknamed "La Partita con Papà" — The Game With Dad — the matches provide a rare moment of normality, of humanity, inside the country’s prison walls.
