Until the 31 December 2023 in Campania there were 7,330 prisoners.
To the 23 April 2024, again in Campania, there are 7,573 prisoners, of which 377 women, out of 5,645 regular places.
On the same date, there were 179 prisoners in semi-freedom. And again, Campania is the second region in terms of overcrowding, the first being Lombardy with 8,944 prisoners out of 5,827 places regularly available. For a total of 61,373 prisoners present in Italy out of 47,018 regularly available places. These are some numbers provided by Samuele Ciambriello, Guarantor of people subjected to measures restricting personal freedom in the Campania Region. Data released at the headquarters of the Regional Council during the presentation of the 2023 Annual Report which makes use of the collaboration of the Regional Observatory on Detention. A ‘merciless’ photograph with overcrowded situations, prisoners with dual diagnoses, drug addicts, absence of psychiatrists and psychologists and a suicide rate twenty times higher than that of free people.
In Campania until March 24th the following are present for a sentence imposed: 44 prisoners with sentences of up to 8 months, 109 prisoners with sentences of up to 1 year, 254 prisoners with sentences of 1-2 years. On the same date, there were 503 prisoners with a remaining sentence of up to 8 months, 840 with a remaining sentence of up to 1 year, 956 with a remaining sentence of 1-2 years. For a total of 2,706 prisoners with remaining sentences. Half of the prisoners have to serve less than two years. “It would be enough for the latter to apply the alternative measures provided by our system to compensate for prison overcrowding in our region” commented Ciambriello.
Since the beginning of the year – according to data released by Ciambriello – there has been an increase in juvenile penal institutions. According to more recent data, there are 66 inmates in Nisida and 29 in Airola.
And then a very significant piece of data: in Campania in 2023 (according to data from the Ministry of Finance) the Court of Appeal of Naples issued 43 payment orders for unjust detention with a total amount of 955,099 euros, the Court of Appeal of Salerno issued 16 ordinances with a total amount of 761,394 euros.
“Last year, my staff and I met 1,542 prisoners, we carried out health interventions, to the prison management, to the surveillance magistrates and I personally wrote twelve times to the Campania Prosecutor’s Office” added Ciambriello “Well, the mission of a Guarantor is to monitor because the person who makes a mistake must have the right to freedom taken away but not the right to dignity. This is important. The right to dignity passes through the right to work, to training, to human and emotional relationships, to the possibility that these people in prisons have dignified spaces.
We have prisoners who in 80% of cases in Campania spend 20 hours in cells. This is not re-educating, it is punishing.” At the meeting too Maurizio D’Ettore Guarantor of the rights of persons deprived of liberty, Francesco Chiaromonte supervisory magistrate at the Court of Naples.
