Interacting with the reflections proposed by Stefano Anastasia, regarding the theme of prisoners' rights, urged, in particular, by the problem of overcrowding, which has long afflicted the prison system, the article moves from some suggestions taken from Herbert Spencer's essay, Prison Ethics . It asks if a rethinking of the penal paradigm, more decisively than what has been done so far, according to the non-syncretistic but authentically synthetic logic of reparation, can let it possible to seriously take into account the rights of persons who have committed a crime. Moreover, it suggets that this should be done combining the reasons of humanitarianism and those of efficiencyism with the need for the defence of society, the respect for the personality of the convicted and the rights and duties of all citizens.
