Bars on the Windows, Laughter Between the Lines<br />"It’s beautiful." Once a year since 2015, BambiniSenzasBarre, an Italian nonprofit organization whose name translates<br />to "children without bars," has organized these soccer matches inside dozens of prisons across Italy.<br />15, 2017<br />MILAN — The 5-year-old boy chased his father around the concrete soccer court, his feathery hair falling over his eyes.<br />"They feel guilty about something they didn’t commit." A day after the match in Milan, the families of about two dozen inmates<br />entered the exercise yard at Secondigliano prison, a maximum-security facility in the suburbs of Naples, for another game.<br />An Italian nonprofit organizes soccer matches inside the country’s prisons in<br />an effort to foster healthy relationships between inmates and their children.<br />"We have to break the pattern." Working with the prisoners, Gallon tries to create environments where fathers<br />and children are interacting directly without mothers around — a rarity in visits at men’s prisons.<br />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.
