A large eye created by Claire Fontaine peering onto a brick wall is the first thing you glimpse upon entering the Vatican Pavilion and created in the Giudecca women’s prison in Venice. At the inauguration, the Minister of Justice Carlo Nordio could not help but talk about the combination that binds justice, art and spirituality in a very strong way. All themes that are «difficult to combine but which sometimes demonstrate the opposite; in fact there is the inability of our reason to see others due to prejudices; but it is art that gives us hope and here, in this Pavilion, it is combined with justice under the eye of faith.” After all, “art gives hope and it is important to have it in a place of suffering and pain.”
At the Venice Biennale, the Vatican Pavilion is the most anticipated pavilion. The minister took the opportunity to reflect and go into detail about endemic problems linked to the prison world. “We are working with the decree that bears my name to reduce preventive detention and with attention to inmates.” «With the CNEL we celebrated the initiative to bring work to prison and for those who leave prison a decent job and salary to avoid relapses and it is no coincidence that the project is called ‘Zero recidivism’». On overcrowding: «It is difficult to build new prisons but we are working to improve the ones we have with a recovery that goes from work to sport but also with the 5 million recently allocated for psychological assistance in light of the many deaths by suicide».
SUICIDES
Just in recent days around 150, including lawyers, magistrates, representatives of institutions, with a sit-in on the staircase of the Palace of Justice in Milan, have asked for “urgent interventions” to stop the tragedy of suicides in prison with its “chilling list” which it was further extended with the death yesterday of a prisoner in Como. An appeal was launched to all parliamentarians and to the Minister of Justice to take action, with “specific rules” and with “urgent interventions, also to stem the emergency” to stop “an unbearable drip”. A drip, dictated by overcrowding, by the lack of cultural, work and recreational activities, by the elimination of relationships with family members, by the scarcity of specialized personnel who “listen to prisoners and are able to understand the reasons for intolerable suffering”. Added to this is a circular on medium security departments, according to which “the majority of inmates live for 20 or 22 hours a day in cells, from which they only leave for an hour of fresh air”.
At the demonstration, in addition to banners and a flyer with “the tragic counter” of suicides in Italian penitentiary institutions which, since the beginning of the year, marks the number 32 (in addition there are 4 penitentiary police officers), there were also the names of those who took their own lives were pronounced
“This is called torture, it is wickedness”. Don Gino Rigoldi, chaplain of the Beccaria juvenile prison for over 50 years, defined the «terrible circular» on the closures of medium security departments which came into force a few months ago according to which, « if there is no activity, you stay in a cell for 22 hours, with the risk that people go crazy when they are so compressed.”
Prisons, the Nordio plan against overcrowding: 2,300 more places. From Rome to Milan, the map
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