Security policy

The twenty-ninth entry is il prigioniero di guerra, and the noun inside it is far narrower than the English word it resembles. « Prisoner » in English covers everyone who is held: the man in a cell after sentencing, the suspect in custody overnight, the soldier taken on the battlefield, and the figure in a metaphor who is a prisoner of his own habits. Italian divides that ground by who is doing the holding. Il prigioniero is held by an enemy or a captor — a war, a kidnapping, a siege — and fare prigionieri belongs to a battle and to nothing else. Somebody held by the state once a court has spoken is il detenuto, the word of the register and of the statistics, or il carcerato in ordinary speech; the place is il carcere in law and la prigione in conversation. So il prigioniero di guerra is not one type of prisoner among several: it is the only thing the bare noun ever means. An English report saying that prisoners were transferred leaves the reader to work out which authority was holding them. The Italian sentence has answered that before it reaches the verb.