Abstract

In this contribution, the author crosses Umberto Curi’s Il colore dell’inferno (2019), taking the cue to ask himself a radical question: not only «what is punishment», but more deeply what is the possible response to guilt and therefore «why punish» and how. With this in mind, the difficulties and aporias of the historically widespread concepts of punishment are reviewed: the retributive idea of justice, the preventive one, the rehabilitative one – which, albeit only partially, distinguishes the approach prescribed in the Italian Constitution. In reality, the question remains unsolved, but it is finally identified in the South African trial of the Truth and Justice Reconciliation Commissions, an alternative and promising way of dealing with issues of justice.