Introduction
Recalling his three months as a political prisoner in the “reactionary year 1849,” the journalist and writer Enrico Montazio described the Volterra fortress as a “grim and tearful tomb of the living.” In that same year, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany implemented measures to confine convicts according to the principles of a continuous segregation regime, called buona compagnia (good company). Quite similar to other foreign experiments of separate systems, this regime was presented as a milder and improved version of the Philadelphian model of solitary confinement. The buona compagnia resulted in the total separation of the condemned, but its advocates stressed the positive effects that frequent visits from the prison director, priests and guards would have on the inmates who were held in isolation. The 1849 adoption of the buona compagnia represented the culmination of a general movement of prison reform which had started a few years earlier.
This article analyses the adoptio...