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“The prisons in Campania are the worst in Italy due to overcrowding, staff shortages, suicides and deaths from other causes of prisoners, assaults and violence against staff, riots, drug trafficking, and the spread of mobile phones.” This is the news Gina Rescigno deputy general secretary of the union of Penitentiary Police S.PP. The situation: at the end of February, 7,480 people were detained in the 15 Campania institutions (of which 366 women and 9,425 foreigners) against an availability of 6,169 prisoners. Added to the overcrowding are approximately 1,300 fewer officers than those envisaged by the various prison staffing plans; the most serious deficiency concerns Poggioreale And Secondigliano, where about 500 men in uniform are missing. Suicides: out of 28 inmates since January 1st, 5 occurred in Campania prisons to which are added two deaths for “causes yet to be ascertained”. Then there is a question that as a prison police union we have raised for some time and which concerns the increase exponential number of deaths due to sudden illness among state police workers (all forces) for which, strangely, there are no official statistics. Even in the prison police there is the same tragic situation. In the last 13 months we have had 41 prison officers who died of sudden illness, with a 200% increase compared to the average of the pre-pandemic years, and even if there is no internal or ISTAT statistics, these data worry us a lot as alarm the families of the staff. The data shows that there is something wrong between the police and the penitentiary police and when put together they describe a very similar situation. In 2022 we have cataloged 4 suicides by the penitentiary police, to which to add the recent tragic gesture of the 55-year-old penitentiary police officer, who took his own life in Serino (Av). In fact, suicide is so prevalent in these professions that the number of police officers who die by suicide is more than triple that of those fatally injured in the line of duty. A strong component is connected to psycho-physical stress in many suicides. And among the many causes, what emerges is the intense stress to which officers are exposed on a daily basis, especially in prisons where staff suffered 514 assaults in the last quarter of 2023. In Italy we have great difficulties, first of all there is no investigation. We asked for clarity on these deaths, because it is right that an answer be given quickly, also because if we continue to hide the problem in this way, all these deaths will never have an answer. The first critical issue is that of attacks and violence against prison staff. Let’s start with the 2023 data: over 1800 attacks by prisoners on members of the Corps were carried out with an average of 5 per day; of these a third produced prognoses of more than 8 days but in 150 cases they were more than 20 days. Also during the year, there were approximately 12 thousand episodes of resistance and insults to a public official in prison; in particular: over 200 in Campania.
Seizure of narcotic substances reaches quantities in the 15 Campania institutes which mark the “negative record” ever, together with the mobile phones and SIM cards found almost every day, mostly delivered via drones. The numerous confirmed cases of clan leaders who have ordered crimes (even murders) through the mobile phone and given commands to the men of the clan outside, threatened people, carried out extortion prove, as we have maintained for some time, that in Campania prisons “they”, the bosses, are in charge and main affiliates of Camorra clans. This is also due to the effect of the so-called dynamic surveillance imposed on Italy by the European Union which consists of what the deputy prosecutor of Catania, Sebastiano Ardita, who was general director of the Dap for nine years, calls “a sort of self-management entrusted to the criminal elites thanks to the open cell regime, which gives free movement to prisoners”. It happens that the cells of Italian prisons remain open from 8 to 14 hours a day, in many cases with a single officer looking after up to 30-40 inmates for hours and hours.
