LIVORNO. The cameras in the Sughere prison have not worked for seven years. Since the terrible flood of 2017, which caused eight deaths and immense devastation in the city. Also putting the security measures of the penitentiary in crisis, given that the “brain” of the internal video surveillance system, essential to prevent prisoners from escaping, was located in the flooded basement. “Unfortunately – recalls the former director of the prison, Carlo Mazzerboa candidate for the city council for “Prospettiva Livorno” – despite the money already allocated and my requests to Rome, nothing has changed since then». And it is also thanks to this flaw that last Saturday, June 22, the thirty-six-year-old escaped from the “walks” of the high security department Umberto Reactionthen caught on a train before reaching Rome Tiburtina station.
The flaws
The out of order cameras allowed the prisoner from Pozzuoli – believed to be close to the Longobardi-Beneduce Camorra clan, who threatened the victims with pickaxes and rifles and asked for protection money on video poker machines – to climb over an unmanned boundary wall without an anti-virus alarm system. – climbing over, without anyone seeing it. And without anyone noticing for an hour: a temporal advantage which, if the thirty-six-year-old had prepared the escape down to the smallest detail with accomplices on the outside, would perhaps have been decisive. But it was of little use to him, given that he got on a regional train without a ticket and the train conductor, recognizing him thanks to the photo also published on the Tyrrhenian in the immediate hours following the escape, he called the railway police and had him arrested. The anti-climbing system is another important flaw in protecting against escapes, combined with the lack of protection of the surrounding walls caused by the enormous shortage of prison police personnel from which the Sughere also suffer. «An efficient video surveillance system – comments Mazzerbo – would also allow a better shift of the officers themselves, who could concentrate on the most important tasks. It is clear that the human eye is better than the electronic one, but the cameras “show” you where to look carefully, they represent a fundamental aid.”
«Money already allocated»
Furthermore, according to Mazzerbo, “the money to reactivate the surveillance system has already been allocated”. «Since it went haywire due to the flood – his words – I have urged the Ministry of Justice several times to take charge of the issue, but nothing has changed. The contracts are national, the interlocutors in Rome often changed, so nothing changed. The same goes for the treatment area, which is fundamental because prisoners are re-educated here, with work that should have started before my retirement last year, but which is still at a standstill. It’s a shame, given that the spaces are currently small and unsuitable for doing good work. Unfortunately, Italian prisons do not re-educate, so much so that 75% of people who later return free continue to commit crimes.”
The other serious problems
The lack of space to re-educate prisoners, without a shadow of a doubt, amplifies the serious problems already existing at Sughere, as recognized by the successor as director, Giuseppe Renna. Furthermore, just after Reazione’s escape, all external activities in the high security departments were temporarily suspended, a decision which is feared could cause tension among the prison population.
“In my opinion, only dangerous people should be locked up in prisons, we need to focus on alternative punishments – continues Mazzerbo – Today, however, in cells we find people with psychiatric problems and drug addicts, who should be helped elsewhere. Many are foreigners: I also hear talk, frequently, of foreign prisoners repatriated to their countries. A desire stated by many ministers, but nothing has ever changed. Unfortunately, what has changed is the climate inside prisons: it is terrible, people live badly and often do not enjoy fundamental rights, which is why suicides or attacks have occurred. In my small way, both in Livorno and Gorgona, I have tried to treat these people like men and the responses were exceptional: even today I meet former prisoners who remember the time spent on the island positively, despite it being a prison term. Then there are burnout syndromes in police officers and others. To think that at Sughere the agents don’t even have a barracks, it’s been closed for 15 years: in this case too the money had been allocated, but nothing has ever moved despite the appeals to the ministry. My solidarity goes to them, as well as to the director Renna and to all the operators”.
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