2023-08-15 04:26:00
To this day they have never met. But the leaders of Sappe, the independent Penitentiary Police Union, have many things to say to the Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio. Because if we really want to defuse the prison emergency, which began in 1997 with the closure of the prisons of Asinara and Pianosa (just to mention the most famous), on the orders of the then minister Giovanni Maria Flick (Prodi government), and accelerated in 2010 by the executive led by Mario Monti with the dismantling of the Opg (judicial psychiatric hospitals), it is necessary “to intervene on the ‘differentiation of the prison population'”, Giovanni Durante, assistant general secretary of Sappe, explains to Libero.
Certainly it is not a question of the magic word, but of a possible way forward. In practice, today, everything ends up in Italian prisons. And this is because in 2010 (Monti government) the psychiatric hospitals were closed and subjects at risk, with various types of ailments, crowd the cells of the penitentiary facilities, creating enormous problems both for ordinary prisoners and for prison police personnel. According to the most reliable estimates, the percentage of subjects with mental disorders present in Italian prisons fluctuates between 10 and 15% of the prison population. «And they are a serious problem for everyone», explains Durante, «made even more serious by the absence of specialized personnel. If there were structures dedicated to them, as it should be, we could already start thinking».
IN THE COMMUNITY
And then there’s the addict issue. Those currently detained range between 15 and 16 thousand. «Too many for our prison system», underlines Durante, «but above all impossible to manage them adequately. They serve communities or dedicated structures. In Rimini there’s plenty of it working perfectly, recovering all those who adhere to the program. We should follow that pattern.” And not just in the case of drug addicts. «In Germany», explains Durante, «the recidivism rate of prisoners has dropped to 15% and this is thanks to the relationship between the prison system and the world of work. A prisoner who finds a job hardly returns to crime. Net of the need to reintegrate those serving a sentence, the real issue remains the number of those in prison and shouldn’t be there. If we add the subjects with mental illness to the drug addicts, we obtain a percentage that brings the prison population back into its optimal range.
That of “differentiation” is a path to follow, to be followed even quickly, but certainly not the exhaustive answer to the problem of overcrowding. For the situation in the country, at most, «4 or 5 high-level structures are needed, that is, prisons with a thousand places. Nothing else». Thinking about pharaonic projects is useless, if anything, clear planning is necessary. Also because, for ten years now, no new penitentiary has been opened, including those already built in previous years and never used. In the Italy of follies this also happens. A case above all, in order to plastically give the idea. In Sala Consilina, in the province of Salerno, the former prison of Vallo di Diano is completely abandoned to itself. The structure was closed as a consequence of the annexation of the Court of Sala Consilina to that of Lagonegro. It was 2015 and the approximately thirty prisoners still in the facility were transferred in a few hours. Eight years after that decision, the prison is in limbo, as it was “left” by the ministry to the state property and not yet handed over to the Municipality of Sala Consilina.
Okay, overcrowding, but also waste and poor management have their weight. And their faults.
And how can we forget the prison plan approved by the Berlusconi government, proposed by the then Minister of Justice, Angelino Alfano? Over the past 15 years it has been the last, and perhaps the only one. «The situation in prisons has become intolerable», claimed the then prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, during the first Council of Ministers in 2010, «a civil state cannot take away the dignity of people. In the past, the problem of overcrowding was solved with amnesties and amnesties, but we want to provide a lasting solution over time». Only that plan was scuttled. On the left they cared so much about the problem of overcrowding that they never addressed it. And when they did, as with the Monti government, they exacerbated the problems rather than reducing them.
THE NORTH PLAN
As for Minister Nordio’s plan, to use the former barracks to house less dangerous prisoners, the figures for possible beneficiaries fluctuate between one thousand and five hundred at least, almost 9 thousand instead if the meshes were widened. These are definitively sentenced to light sentences, who could be transferred to abandoned structures to receive differentiated prison treatment. While waiting for the head of the department to provide the details of the plan to reduce overcrowding in prisons and improve living conditions, when the alarm rises again for suicides behind bars, we are reflecting on the impact that the reform, already at the center of criticism of the prison police unions.
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