Ripartenze: riprendiamoci il futuro! Training and employment paths for prisoners
The “Ripartenze” project, sponsored by the Lottomatica Foundation and ELIS in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice, has kicked off. 60% of inmates return to prison after serving their sentences. With work, recidivism can drop to 2%.
Officially kicked off, at the Velletri Prison, the project Ripartenze: Let’s Take Back the Future. Sponsored by Fondazione Lottomatica and implemented by the training center of the nonprofit ELIS, the project involves inmates and people subject to other justice measures in job placement paths. At the end of a selection process involving 600 people, training has now begun for the first 20 participants that will lead them to work as green area maintainers in Rome and waste sorting workers at the AVR Group’s Guidonia M. platform and as electrical operators for the Siram Veolia company in Milan.
“We are particularly proud to support ‘Ripartenze,’ a concrete opportunity for the social and professional reintegration of people who are facing paths to justice. We are convinced that work can be a powerful tool for change, capable of significantly reducing the risk of recidivism and restoring dignity and hope to those who have made mistakes. The choral nature of the project emphasizes the principle of collaboration and sharing of different skills, a fundamental condition for the success of initiatives with high social value – commented Riccardo Capecchi, president of Lottomatica Foundation.
Participants in the program are already going through an initial phase of strengthening soft skills needed to fit into business settings. This will be followed bytechnical training and thenjob placement, scheduled for the beginning of the new year.
“This initiative highlights, even more than a normal training course,” emphasizes Pietro Cum, ELIS CEO, “the great value of work as a central element of a person’s dignity and as a fundamental condition for enabling them to redesign the future. It is further proof of the social impact that vocational training is able to generate.”
The project came about as part of the collaboration between Lottomatica Foundation and ELIS through an agreement entered into with the Department of Prison Administration at the Ministry of Justice.
According to data compiled in 2024 by Censis and The European House Ambrosetti, commissioned by CNEL and the Ministry of Justice, the risk of returning to prison can drop as low as 2 percent in the case of inmates who have had the opportunity for vocational placement. This is an extremely significant result when compared with the current recidivism rates of the prison population, according to which 6 out of 10 convicts have already been in prison at least once.