CIVITAVECCHIA – He tried to hang himself in his cell, but the prompt intervention of the police officers who intervened was decisive in saving him.
The protagonist is a foreign prisoner restricted to Civitavecchia, as reported by Maurizio Somma, national secretary for Lazio of the Autonomous Penitentiary Police Union.
«On the night shift, at around 00.10, a Tunisian prisoner – he explains – was saved at the last minute from an attempted hanging in the New Joints Department. The man had locked himself in the bathroom of the cell, but the officer on duty, making his rounds and not having seen him in bed, alarmed because he was not responding to his calls, immediately raised the alarm. Having entered the cell, the prison officers saw the inmate who had a cut sheet around his neck and was almost dead: only thanks to the prompt intervention of the general surveillance and the few staff on duty – at night most of the sections are combined and the officers they are forced to do two/three duty jobs – their lives were saved. After this gesture, the prisoner was subjected to medical care in the infirmary and placed under visual surveillance.”
The SAPPE expresses «a warm appreciation for the precious work of the agents of the Civitavecchia prison, thanks to whom a new tragic death in prison was prevented. But let’s once again denounce the lack of healthcare, psychological and psychiatric workers and reiterate the need for regional competitions and the hiring of healthcare personnel to be allocated to the Lazio prisons.”
For the general secretary of SAPPE, Donato Capece, «this is the Penitentiary Police, ready to act with other operators and with the inmates themselves to protect the lives of prisoners. The objective fact is that the choice to take one’s own life certainly originates from a psychological state of discomfort. It is an objective fact that those who have ended up in the trap of deviance are often the bearers of personal, social and family problems”, concludes the trade unionist, who finally notes that “yet another attempted suicide of a detained person, foiled in time by professionalism and attention of policemen, demonstrates how social and human problems persist, indeed, in penitentiaries. And consider that in the last 20 years the women and men of the Penitentiary Police have prevented more than 23 thousand attempted suicides in the country’s prisons and prevented almost 175 thousand acts of self-harm from having harmful consequences”.
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