The treasurer of Radicali Italiani Filippo Blengino visited the Cuneo prison this morning (4 May), with a delegation from Radicali Cuneo. «As in most of our penitentiary institutions – Blengino states in a note – 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. Cuneo prison also appears to be a powder keg, with alarming and out-of-control mental distress, continuous attacks on healthcare personnel, complaints from inmates about the enormous difficulties in accessing services and responses within a reasonable time. A degradation that brings with it reforms never made, a continuous violation of the re-educational purpose of the sentence, the absence of alternative measures.”
In Cuneo, «as in all Italian prisons – we read in the note – 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.” For this reason, concludes Blengino, together with Lorenzo Roggia (secretary of Radicali Cuneo), Emanuele Gallo (treasurer of Rad Cuneo) and Alice Depetro (RI management), «we ask again 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.”
