Radicals visiting the Cuneo prison: “It’s a powder keg. Soon the arrival of another 40 prisoners”

The treasurer of Radicali Italiani, Filippo Blengino, visited the Cuneo prison this morning, with a delegation from Radicali Cuneo. “Like in most of our penitentiary institutions – declares Blengino – the situation is out of control. As Italian Radicals we have been denouncing for years the total absence of programming, the inhuman conditions to which prisoners are subjected, the dramatic shortage of staff. Even the Cuneo prison is configured as a powder keg, with alarming and out of control mental distress, continuous attacks on healthcare personnel, complaints from prisoners about the enormous difficulties in accessing services and responses within reasonable times”.

A degradation, declare in a joint note Blengino, the secretary of Radicali Cuneo Lorenzo Roggia, the treasurer Emanuele Gallo and the manager Alice Depetro, “which brings with it reforms never made, a continuous violation of the re-educational purpose of the sentence, the absence of alternative measures”.

“In Cuneo, – they add – as in all Italian prisons there is a lack of superintendents and inspectors, a worrying increase in the prison population is expected, in a few days another 40 prisoners will arrive from the Turin prison. Politics, even local ones, turn a blind eye to a dramatic situation. Here too the suicide emergency has made itself felt, with a twenty-five year old prisoner who took his own life at the beginning of the year”.

“We ask again – conclude the radical exponents – to approve the Giachetti proposal to reduce overcrowding, measures to decriminalize some crimes and measures to increase psychiatric care. We need a proposal for overall prison reform: we cannot waste any more time”.