“Stop suicides in prison: there is no more time”. This is the title of the meeting-debate organized by Criminal Chamber of Varese “Giuseppe Lozito-Lucio Paliaga”, scheduled for Friday, starting at 2.30 pm, at the “Sala Risorgimento” of Villa Mirabello.
The number of suicides in prison increases day by day and, as criminal lawyers point out, urgent interventions and planning are needed that take into consideration the need to make life in penitentiary institutions more humane and resocialising. The moment is dramatic, highlights the president of the Criminal Chamber of Varese, Fabio Margarini. «Our Criminal Chamber – he says to Dubbio – has organized an event on the increasingly dramatic and current topic of suicides in prison and the conditions in which prisoners live. The initiative is part of the calendar of events called by the Union of Italian Criminal Chambers in a national program of “oratory marathon”. We believe it is necessary to never let our guard down. It is necessary to discuss and reflect on possible concrete, immediate and longer-term responses to deprive the prison condition of that dehumanization of prison which seems to be the primary cause of the unacceptable suicide drama.”
The event also aims to raise awareness and move the institutions. «Montesquieu said – comments the lawyer Margarini – that every punishment inflicted by a man on another man, which does not derive from absolute necessity, is an act of tyranny. And if historically the punishments were to harm the body of the tortured by virtue of a retributive and exemplifying function of the publicly exposed punishment, there is no doubt that after Beccaria and the Enlightenment the focal point of every more advanced research becomes the mind, the psyche or to put it with Michel Foucault, the soul of the prisoner who is intended to be re-educated for civil and social life. When we talk about degrading prison conditions, inhumane overcrowding, it is that suffering in prison that we must talk about and about which today politics cannot pretend and remain indifferent to the ferociously dramatic data on suicides.”
The data presents a worrying picture. In 2022 there were 85 suicides, in 2023 there were 75. This year and we are already at 44. «It shouldn’t even be kept quiet – adds the president of the Criminal Chamber of Varese – the equally disturbing number of suicide attempts foiled by the intervention of penitentiary police personnel or other prisoners and also that of post-detention suicides which were the subject of an interrogation broader parliamentarian on the reintegration of prisoners. If imprisonment has the function assigned to it by the Fundamental Charter, the path of each prisoner must be, according to a definition that I greatly appreciated by the Deputy Minister of Justice, Francesco Paolo Sisto, “humanocentric” and not “carcinocentric””.
The initiative will be opened by Fabio Margarini (Varese Criminal Chamber), Elisabetta Bertani (treasurer of Varese Criminal Chamber) and Gianluca Franchi (vice president and secretary of the Varese Equal Opportunities Committee). Furthermore, interventions by Valentina Alberta (president of the Criminal Chamber of Milan), Vincenzo Andraous (journalist and essayist), Rita Bernardini (president of the association “Nessuno Tocchi Caino”), Elisabetta Brusa (member of the forensic congress body, Detention-Prison Commission) Maria Chiara Gadda (deputy), Franco Grillo (psychiatrist), Serena Pirrello (pedagogical legal consultant at the Varese prison), Don David Riboldi (chaplain of the Busto Arsizio prison and founder of the “La Valle” Social Cooperative of Ezekiel”), Giulia Vassalli (Supervisory magistrate of the Court of Varese) and Andrea Pellicini (deputy and member of the Justice Commission in the Chamber).
Often, prisoners – even mothers – are relegated to the margins, they do not make a fuss. According to the lawyer Elisabetta Brusa, efforts must be multiplied so that this part of the prison population receives the necessary attention. «We are talking about women – he comments -, not just mothers, prisoners because, constituting a minority in the penitentiary sector, their needs are often ignored or in any case little known». It is therefore necessary to make an effort to overcome some approaches of the past. «Prisons – adds the lawyer Brusa – are designed and built “by men for men”, thus underestimating women’s emotional, family, social and health needs. The laws are the same for men and women and the prison institutions, through circulars and internal regulations which are different from each other throughout the national territory, regulate access to common facilities for sports, work and training activities and the “survival” expenses for purchase of goods related to personal care and hygiene. Lawyers are the voice to bring their needs to the outside. The commitment of the lawyers and the forensic congress body is to continue to interact with politics to find solutions and give dignity to the almost three thousand prisoners housed in Italian prisons”.
