Sicilian prisons are exploding: in Ragusa two officers were injured by an inmate who simulated hanging, in Palermo a minor attempted to actually hang himself in his cell. In Ragusa two officers intervened to save a foreign prisoner fearing that he was about to take his own life, but just inside the cell they were attacked with a sharp plastic object. They later ended up in the emergency room. “Enough is enough, the measure is full. Security within prisons must become a priority commitment”states the Civil Service CGIL Sicilia, which revealed the facts.
“It is a situation that has become unsustainable and intolerable – say the general secretary Gaetano Agliozzo, and the FP Ragusa secretary, Nunzio Fernandez – it is necessary to find timely and incisive countermeasures so as not to jeopardize the health and lives of those who guarantee the security service in prisons every day. The Department of Prison Administration – Agliozzo and Fernandez conclude – must take action, planning immediate interventions that ensure conditions for a greater and more effective level of safety”.
In the Malaspina juvenile prison in Palermo “everything happened last night around 9pm, a time when the Penitentiary Police staff is even more limited also due to the lack of staff, when a minor prisoner of Maghreb origin tried to hang himself using a noose created with the supplied sheets”, said Gioacchino Veneziano, regional secretary of the Uil Ponitentiary Police (Uilpa). “Only thanks to the rapid and timely operational acumen of the penitentiary police together with the intervention of the medical guard was the minor resuscitated, but kept under observation on the indication of the medical team, while the inspector acting as department commander was on site together with the director returned to duty immediately when notified of the critical event”. “The juvenile prison in Palermo which was already experiencing difficult conditions – added Veneziano – otoday aggravated by the fact that for over a week there has been no commander, but the Department has not yet assigned a replacement, so that the responsibility is entrusted to the inspectors who, despite operating with great professionalism and self-sacrifice, are taking on a task that is not relevant to the role, for therefore we urge without further delay the assignment of the deputy manager to assign the function of department commander”.
