TERAMO – Tragedy in Teramo prison. A 74-year-old prisoner, who was serving a sentence for a murder committed with his son, took his own life in a cell in Castrogno.
“At 7am, the cellmate immediately called the policeman on duty. Rescue services began immediately in a desperate attempt to save his life, but the efforts made were to no avail”, explains Giuseppe Pallini, secretary of the Autonomous Penitentiary Police Union.
As far as we have been able to learn, this is a restricted individual who has never been the protagonist of excesses and has always diligently observed the penitentiary rules. Therefore, nothing could suggest self-harming conduct on his part.
The trade unionist highlights that “similar episodes, in a certain way, bring with them the failure of the penitentiary system, sometimes incapable of intercepting the discomfort of the most vulnerable who see the only way out in the extreme gesture. We are dismayed and heartbroken: a prisoner who takes his own life in prison is a defeat for the State and for all of us who work on the front line.”
For the Secretary General Donato Capece, the invoked urgent interventions suggested by SAPPE are becoming increasingly necessary to deal with the constant situation of tension experienced in Italian prisons: “A new penitentiary system divided into three levels could be envisaged: the first, for less serious crimes with a prison sentence of no more than 3 years, characterized by alternative penalties to prison, such as the institution of “probation”; the second level concerns prison sentences exceeding 3 years, which will inevitably have to be served in prison, but in much less crowded institutions due to the relief resulting from the operation of the first level and a notable reduction in the use of precautionary custody .
Finally, the third level is that of maximum security, in which containment in prison is the priority objective”, highlights the SAPPE leader. “In the context of future prospects, it is therefore necessary for the State, while maintaining criminal relevance, to indicate the conduct for which prison is not necessary, hypothesizing different sanctions, redesigning in a certain sense the entire system, also because overcrowding prevents de facto separation of prisoners. And the Penitentiary Police, which we believe should increasingly be characterized as a Police for criminal execution as well as prevention and security for the institutional tasks entrusted to it by the law, is certainly the one properly responsible for controlling the subjects admitted to alternative measures – concludes Capece .
