No other public employee risks being injured every day like the Penitentiary Police.
Pavia, 2 May 2024
“Yet another prison policeman injured in the face by an inmate in Pavia prison. It happened yesterday morning when a Policeman who had gone to provide support in another section of the prison where he usually works, was grabbed around the neck by an Italian prisoner who also punched him numerous times in the face. The colleague was taken to the emergency room and discharged in the evening with several days of convalescence.
This was announced by Calogero Lo Presti, regional coordinator for the FP Cgil Penitentiary Police of Lombardy and Daniele Pirri, provincial secretary of the FP Cgil Pavia: “The penitentiary police officers seriously injured by prisoners confined in the Pavia prison are becoming ‘normal’ news stories. Just three weeks ago, there was a headbutt to the face that fractured the nasal septum of another colleague also in Pavia, but it is the lack of policemen on duty (25% of the expected staff is missing) with shortages of 75% in the role of Inspectors and Superintendents who are putting the management of a prison with 30% more inmates than the maximum capacity foreseen into crisis”.
Mirko Manna, national coordinator of the FP Cgil Penitentiary Police: “We wish a speedy recovery to our colleague injured yesterday, but it is essential to rethink the management of prisons. No public employee, not even among the other Police Forces, goes to work with the high probability of being injured by the first inmate who decides to vent his frustration on the Penitentiary Police. The fake solutions of open cells and dynamic surveillance adopted to avoid sanctions from the ECtHR are no longer sufficient to manage a penitentiary system with more and more prisoners and fewer and fewer policemen. There is an urgent need for a Government commitment for the immediate hiring of at least 5,000 units of the “Blue Basques” and to review the organic plan of the Corps which, after the indiscriminate cuts of the Madia law, has brought the Penitentiary Police to its knees by preventing sufficient hiring of Agents to replace the Police personnel who retire every year”.
Editorial board
