TRENT. The mayor of Trento Franco Ianeselli a few hours after the news of Chico Forti’s return to Italy he had rejoiced on social media like most of the politicians of ‘our home’ and other national politicians (right and left): ”Welcome back to Italy Chico! I imagine your joy, that of your family, of those who never often love you. And I really hope that starting from your story, greater awareness can now arise about the stories and living conditions of incarcerated people”. Indeed the greater awareness sThe stories and living conditions of incarcerated people are developing but in reverse.
Forti is enjoying an indescribable amount of ‘favors’ compared to normal prisoners and the narrative (pumped by a bulimic politics that is waiting for nothing other than a new media ‘wagon’ on which to get on in order to show oneself, no matter how) that is emerging is the most harmful thing that can be built for the Italian prison system than from the story Strong comes out as an extraordinary place: for Chico, spaghetti with mussels (”even the risk of gaining weight”, we read that he said), selfie with parliamentarians inside the prison (phones going in and out no one knows exactly how), prisoners who lend him clothes, visits to the facility with smiles and pats on the back, the permission to meet the parents arrived within 48 hours of arriving in Italy.
Yet Montorio, the prison where Forti is held it is a place where from November to February yes. I am 5 prisoners committed suicidea place that vice president of the “Sugar Bars” Association(which offers support to prisoners and their families) says that the Dolomites are ”among the most overcrowded in Italy: even four people live in rooms of 2. Pigs live in bigger spaces”. The penitentiary police defined themselves as indignant and embittered by what happened in recent days around the figure of Chico Forti: ”Prison is not a stage on which stars can do their show and receive highly regarded treatments and benefits”. The sentences, declares the general secretary of the prison police union, Aldo Di Giacomoapply ”without privileges for series A prisoners. It must to the numerous ‘poor Christ’ prisoners, to the young people who have taken their own lives in their cells, to the over 80s who continue to be detained despite their precarious health conditions and age, to the drug addicts and mentally ill people who should be treated”. And again: ”LThe image that has now been formed around the world of Italian prisons is that of yet another Italian joke. Detention in Italy seems like a reward holiday“.
The Italian penitentiary system, on the contrary, is full of critical issues. As stated on the penitentiary police website ”For the ECHR and the European Council, Italian penitentiaries are more uncivilized than Hungarian ones” and so on data. ”Let’s start from the ECHR – they write -: since the Court was established in 1959, until 2021, Italy is the third country to have received the most convictions (2,466), after Turkey and Russia. Hungary received 614. Italy was convicted 9 times for torture (Hungary never), 297 times for violation of the right to a fair trial (Hungary 21), 33 times for inhuman and degrading treatment (Hungary 38), even 1,203 times for the excessive duration of trials (344 Hungary). The latter is an undisputed record for Italy”. In short bad, very bad, nothing but spaghetti and smiles in selfies.
Today also Criminal Chamber of Verona with the board of directorsor, he comes out to stigmatize what is being sold and reading about the detention of Chico Forti: ”In the face of considerations of real illegality in which all the inmates of our city’s prison are forced to live and die, the Veronese Criminal Chamber learns from the press who, a few days after entering the Verona-Montorio prison, was in Chico Forti allowed to visit his elderly mother. While we do not intend to go into the merits of the provision in any way, we hope that the permit will be issued quickly becomes treatment reserved indiscriminately for all prisonersthose who await a decision on their requests, in harmony with the investigative needs that characterize each specific case. Also in fact, the possibility of lightening the burden of suffering that today accumulates within the walls of the Scaliger prison depends on the speed of the jurisdictional decisions of the Supervisory Judiciary. Only if the timing observed in this matter becomes a constant also in future decisions, then we can look to the future with hope”.
