“We have found a shortage of penitentiary police personnel but also of educators. There is a problem of overcrowding although it is not excessive – 319 prisoners compared to a capacity of 217. The prison conditions are decent with cells of one, maximum two prisoners and there is an appreciable university training center where prisoners can study and create the foundations for a new future perspective”.
This was underlined by Senator Silvio Franceschelli and the Honorable Laura Boldrini of the Democratic Party who, together with the mayor of San Gimignano Andrea Marrucci, visited the Ranza prison. In the institute they met the director, Maria Grazia Giampiccolo, the prison police commander and held talks with some inmates. A visit that is part of the “You must have seen – prison emergency” campaign launched on a national scale by the Democratic Party to draw attention to the prison emergency which today marks yet another suicide.
“What needs to be strengthened in the Ranza prison – underline the two parliamentarians – is the integration between the territory and the prison because its position, so isolated, is penalising. Certainly more needs to be done to support investment efforts in prisons.”
“More generally – add Franceschelli and Boldrini – the Government, instead of implementing alternative measures to detention, continues to institute new crimes or increase the penalties for already existing crimes, just think of the rave, Caivano and Cutro decrees. This means that every month 330 new prisoners enter the Italian prison system, as indicated by the latest Antigone Report. In December 2023 there were already 60 thousand prisoners compared to a prison capacity of 51 thousand prisoners. We would not like to return to the levels of the Torreggiani ruling of 2013 for which the European Court of Human Rights condemned us precisely for detention treatments incompatible with respect for human dignity. At that time there were approximately 67 thousand prisoners in our prisons. We will do everything to prevent this from happening” conclude the democratic parliamentarians.
“The municipal administration, despite not having direct competence – said the mayor of San Gimignano Andrea Marrucci – took action and managed, during the Covid period, to provide the Dap, which decided to allocate an initial allocation of 2.3 million euros, a technical and economic feasibility study to bring drinking water and methane gas to the prison facility which currently does not have it. I thank our parliamentarians for the attention they pay to a topic in which too often even we administrators have felt alone. A profitable opportunity to see the conditions of the prison with their own eyes and they were able to gather many lights and some shadows but which did not arise today but when the prison was designed in that area” concludes Marrucci.
Tags: Carceri Franceschelli Boldrini visit Ranza staff prison conditions dignified
