One of the sentries on duty in the Asti prison noticed a drone flying over the penitentiary and immediately raised the alarm.
The checks immediately allowed us to intercept the aircraft and seize five mobile phones intended for prisoners.
The three people who were piloting the radio-controlled aircraft from outside the prison were arrested.
“The alarm raised months ago is repeated: crime, of drones to deliver cell phones and drugs to detention facilities” says Vicente Santilli, secretary for Piedmont of Sappe “The problem has been known for a long time and continues to grow day after day. We are concerned not only by their use for illicit purposes outside of prison, as repeatedly found in the investigative activities that are carried out daily in penitentiaries and across the national territory, but also the actual trade that is present within the walls where a smartphone given between prisoners multiplies its value dramatically, becoming a source of huge illicit profits for those who manage to manage the trade”.
He continues: “Concrete interventions are needed aimed at updating the concept of punishment and its execution in the present day, with today’s technologies and the current penitentiary reality, made up – among other things – of increasingly violent prisoners. It is therefore indispensable invest in staff training as well as individual and departmental equipmentso that the Penitentiary Police is placed in the best conditions to be able to ensure for the State what is perhaps the most important institutional task entrusted to it, that is, guaranteeing order within prevention and penal institutions, protecting their safety, for the benefit of free community”.
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