Holidaymakers arriving on the white sands of Pianosa Island off western Italy are welcomed by hosts unlike any others: five prisoners still serving time who help manage a local hotel.
At first sight, there is little to set apart the island, one of seven in the Tuscan archipelago, with its quaint port, schools of fish and waters as turquoise as those in the Indian Ocean around the Maldives.
The concrete wall of a high security prison attests to its past as a penal colony, where mafia bosses considered particularly dangerous were once sent before the prison closed in 1998.
Photo: AFP
However, a handful of convicted criminals are back on Pianosa, earning their keep and rustling up food for tourists thanks to a program started in 2000 by a local cooperative called San Giacomo in conjunction with the prison on nearby Elba Island.
“It’s a really positive initiative. It allows these people to gradually re-integrate into society with a lot less trauma than if they were to leave prison from one day to the next,” the cooperative’s deputy head Brunello De Batte said.
The inmates, each serving a long sentence for undisclosed crimes, have been given contracts to work as barmen, cooks, cleaners, waiters, even gift shop salesmen in the small, 12-room hotel with a bar and restaurant run by the cooperative.
Photo: AFP
Still considered prisoners, they cannot leave the island and are confined at night to special rooms.
Yet “over the years, I’ve seen these prisoners mature, take on responsibilities. They are completely changed compared to when they arrived. They have developed a sense of belonging to a group,” he said.
Filippo, a 32-year-old Sicilian with piercing blue eyes now in his second year working on Pianosa, says the experience has given him a new sense of self-worth and something to work towards.
“Life has given me a second chance. I feel accepted by society once more,” he said, though he added that it is not always easy to win people’s trust.
“People are prejudiced and that’s normal, but I try right away to switch their opinion,” he said as he changed the sheets in the hotel bedrooms.
Pianosa today is a wildlife sanctuary, but also draws visitors who remember it as the fictional setting for the World War II squadron trying to keep sane in Joseph Heller’s satirical novel Catch 22.
Only prisoners who have already served at least two-thirds of their sentence and shown exemplary behavior can apply to take part in the program.
“I want to be able to show customers that I am normal. Just because you’re a prisoner doesn’t mean you have four arms. We are human, and everyone makes mistakes,” he said.
At the port, holidaymakers tuck into fresh fish caught in the island’s pristine waters and prepared by the convicts .
“I think it’s a great initiative. I had a fantastic pasta with red mullet last night,” a 30-something tourist named Benedetto said, as he strolled with his baby son along the deserted dock.
Organizers consider the program a success, notably in offering job training to inmates. There are no official statistics, but they said prisoners have found work upon release, including one now successfully employed as a mason.
The organizers, however, are struggling to keep all going. The tax allowances afforded to cooperatives like San Giacomo have been suspended as Italy fights to battle off the financial crisis.
There has also been a drop in the number of tourists coming to the island, as recession-hit holidaymakers tighten their belts and stay at home. This forced the program last year to reduce the number of prisoners taking part from eight to five.
Filippo says he does not want to think about it going under and laughs off the prospect.
“There is a risk that it will all go down the drain, but if that happens I’ll go rest a bit within the four walls of the prison,” he said.
However, De Batte refuses to give up, saying the San Giacomo group will not only carry on supporting the hotel and restaurant project, but is hoping to open a full-fledged professional training center for prisoners on Pianosa.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”