Bars on the Windows, Laughter Between the Lines

MILAN — The 5-year-old boy chased his father around the concrete soccer court, his feathery hair falling over his eyes. Around them the shouts and squeals of other children and the shrill whistles of a referee created a hyperkinetic cacophony reminiscent of any playground.

In this moment, it felt almost possible — almost — to forget the metal bars on the windows of the spartan room, to ignore the guards keeping silent watch, and to experience, briefly, the illusion of freedom.

The father, Sebastiano Russo, 45, has been incarcerated at Opera prison, a maximum-security facility here on the outskirts of Milan, since 2015, a circumstance his young son does not fully comprehend. Russo’s wife, Rosa Bianca Cappelletti, said the boy used to refer to the prison as “Dad’s house.” Lately, he has been calling it “Dad’s cage” and asking why he cannot see his father more often.

The sight of the two kicking a ball around one recent afternoon in the prison’s cold, concrete gymnasium filled her with emotion.

“There are tears in my eyes,” Cappelletti said on the sideline. “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.

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. But they also reflect BambiniSenzasBarre’s belief that children of the incarcerated possess a human right to maintain relationships with their parents.

“Maybe as inmates, we don’t even know what prison is really like,” said Maurizio, a 39-year-old who has been at Opera since 2014. “The real punishment of prison is not for us. It’s for the people we love.”

Maurizio asked that his last name not be used because his sentencing, for charges including homicide, was not complete. On the day of the visits this month, he shivered inside the dimly lit gymnasium as he awaited the arrival of his wife and two of his sons, ages 13 and 7. (His oldest, who is 19, was at work.)

Maurizio was wearing the shorts and socks of Inter Milan, and the space around him was as cold as a walk-in refrigerator. Like the other fathers here, he was picked to take part in the match because of his participation, and progress, in BambiniSenzasBarre’s other programs at Opera.

It was Maurizio’s second time playing in the game, which he said provided “a little bit of life” — or at least something closer to real life, anyway, than sitting at a table with his family during the staid visitation hours that are his only other face-to-face contact with them.

His face softened to a smile when they finally arrived. He ran his fingers through the older boy’s hair and touched his face. He wrapped a muscular, tattooed arm around his younger son’s neck and kissed his forehead. He stared into his wife’s eyes. The constant caresses were part of an effort, he said, “to make them feel my love.”

After the children and their fathers were divided into two teams, they walked out to the middle of the court in two straight lines and waved to a crowd of imaginary fans, as if they were professional players in a packed stadium. The play was haphazard and disorganized, but such informality seemed to be precisely the point. Afterward, the families had time to sit and talk. Some played around with the other equipment in the gym.

“They’ve had their bags ready for a week,” Maurizio’s wife said about her boys. “This happens in everyday life outside the prison, but it’s something we’re not used to. So for us it’s emotional.”

Similar scenes played out this month at more than 50 prisons in Italy. Lia Sacerdote, the founder and president of BambiniSenzasBarre, said she hoped to see similar events in all 193 of the country’s prisons. Sacerdote has proposed that all members of the European network COPE (Children of Prisoners Europe) adopt the games, too.

“Those children are marginalized,” Sacerdote said. “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. Morning rain had left splotches of mud on the ground. Buildings housing other prisoners towered over the yard, and they dangled their arms through the bars of their cell windows while watching the activity below.

Some of the inmates displayed nifty skills, but this, too, was only a semi-serious affair. Several players detoured off the field during the match to plant kisses on wives and babies. When the game ended, the families formed clusters around the field to catch up and to nibble sfogliatelle, the shell-shaped pastry native to the region. Guards watched from afar, barely conspicuous.

“It’s one of the few opportunities they have to live a normal situation, like those who are outside,” said Carmen Forino, one of the deputy directors of Secondigliano.

For the incarcerated, though, the normal can feel extraordinary.

In recent years, the Italian prison system has undergone a period of reckoning, acknowledging and tackling issues like overcrowding and poor treatment of inmates. Amid that larger effort, BambiniSenzasBarre has advocated on behalf of the children of prisoners, and on developing workshops and educational spaces inside prison walls to facilitate parent-child connections.

The absence of such relationships has far-reaching negative consequences, the group said. Children of the imprisoned are more likely to go to prison or to drop out of school, and they are more likely to endure a host of other social problems. In Italy, for example, participation in organized crime often spans generations of a family.

A healthy, positive relationship with a parent, then, “is an instrument to prevent crime,” said Martina Gallon, a psychiatrist with BambiniSenzasBarre. “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. To promote communication, she and her colleagues use activities that dissolve tension, like art and, more recently, soccer.

On the soccer court that afternoon in Milan, Russo took advantage of every moment of the free time. He picked up his son and spun him around. He let the ball go through his legs and into the goal. When he was shown a mock red card, he walked off the court and kissed Cappelletti through the sideline netting.

“Children give you the strength to hope and look forward,” said Russo, who could remain imprisoned until 2026 for his participation in an international drug trafficking operation. “Through my children, I’m able to see what I want to become, the man I want to be.”

Soon, the sun disappeared through the prison windows, and it grew quiet inside the gymnasium as the event neared its end. At times, it seemed as if the only sound in the room was that of aggressive cheek-kissing.

When it was time for the families to leave, the fathers crowded around the metal gates of the gym, waving, blowing kisses and curling their fingers into hearts. The children and their mothers shuffled down the dank, dim hallway, and the doors closed behind them.