Fifty-five inmates committed suicide in 2024 in Italian prisons, as well as four penitentiary police officers. Their names were read this morning (Thursday 18 April) in the representative hall of the Province of Brindisi, on the occasion of a press conference held by the president of the organisation, Toni Matarrelli, and the guarantor of persons deprived of personal liberty of the Province of Brindisi, Valentina Farina. A similar initiative took place at the same time in other prison cities.
In the Brindisi prison no suicides were recorded in the first four months of the year. Matarrelli explains that the structure, thanks also to the synergy with the ASL Brindisi and the associations, is in a better condition than others, but the situation is not rosy. Suffice it to say that the prison in Via Appia currently houses 206 people, including 4 over 65, compared to a capacity of 160 regulation places. There are 150 inmates with drug addiction.
The conference of territorial guarantors of people deprived of their freedom issues a warning at national level. “The majority of prisoners – we read in a statement – live for over 20 hours a day in overcrowded cells, from which they only leave in the ed. “Hours of fresh air”. This represents, without a doubt, a clear violation of the principles and guarantees recognized by our Constitutional Charter and the Penitentiary Regulations. This situation is not insurmountable.”
“It is necessary to fill the time of detention with meaning, offering more “treatment” activities (cultural, work, sporting and recreational). Family and volunteer relationships must also be strengthened with an increase in interviews, telephone calls and video calls”.
The association underlines “the absolute need for specialized personnel (psychologists, educators, psychiatrists, pedagogists, social workers, linguistic mediators) who listen to prisoners and are able to understand the reasons for intolerable suffering”. And then “a greater number of alternative measures to detention are needed, making the Surveillance Jurisdiction efficient and effective, also by allocating more resources. In fact, there are several thousand prisoners with a final sentence of less than or equal to three years in prison.”
The conference asks “all parliamentarians for specific and urgent rules, and for concrete measures to be taken quickly from the Minister of Justice, in accordance with the words of the President of the Republic who called for: ‘urgent interventions, also to stem the emergency'”.
“As of now – concludes the Conference – we are available for meetings with the Minister of Justice, the justice commissions of the House and Senate and the Penitentiary Administration to give our contribution of science and experience to the resolution of the serious problems that afflict prisons , the people detained”.
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Tags: Overcrowding problem Brindisi
