Caring masculinities in prison? Social workers and programs dealing with incarcerated fatherhood

The article explores how fatherhood in prison is conceived and supported by policy intervention in Italy. Despite the fact that, in 2020, 96% of adults detained in Italian prisons were men and half of them had at least one child, fatherhood in prison, a gendered space and institution where masculinities are (re)produced, is an underdeveloped research topic. Adopting a caring masculinity perspective, we focus on incarcerated fatherhood to investigate if and how Italian social programs that deal with incarcerated parents target fathers and, if so, to what extent they promote caring masculinities. To this aim, we will combine an analysis of social programs for incarcerated fathers in Italy, almost entirely run by third sector organizations, with discursive interviews with educators, welfare workers, and third sector stakeholders who participated in the implementation of a project for incarcerated parents in a north Italian prison. The results of our analysis show that involved fatherhood is not only denied to incarcerated men; it is also not allowed in an institution, such as a prison, where domination is the keyword.