“Suicides in prison are a national emergency.” This was declared by the Antigone Association which fights for rights in prisons.
“Ariano Irpino, Biella, Sassari, Teramo. These are the four prisons where between Friday and Saturday, in 24 hours, the last four inmates committed suicide – Antigone recalls – The last of the, so far, 44 who took their lives in a penal institution in the first 5 and a half months of 2024, one every almost three days. A number that if it continued to grow at this rate would lead to 2024 surpassing the tragic figure of 2022 when suicides in prison were 85″.
“If in a city of 60,000 inhabitants 44 people committed suicide in a few months, we would not talk about anything else – adds the association – For this reason, the Government and Parliament must deal with it as a priority, even in the face of an increasingly serious overcrowding situation, with over 14,000 people detained without a regulated place, increasingly difficult living conditions for inmates and very tiring work for prison operators”.
According to Antigone “we need to intervene with measures that lead to a reduction of the burden on prisons through the granting of alternative measures; it is necessary to liberalize telephone calls by equipping cells with telephones where (and this is the majority of cases) there are no security problems with respect to contacts with the outside; you need to hire staff; it is necessary to reduce the weight of the insulation; we need to modernize prison sentences; life in prison needs to be full of initiatives, without obstacles or bureaucracies; there must never be violence.”
Finally, the association invites the government to withdraw the security bill “which goes towards a path that is the opposite of what is needed”. ”
Above all – he concludes – the introduction of the crime of penitentiary revolt, which also punishes passive resistance and non-violent protest with a sentence of up to 8 years, will leave prisoners with their own bodies as the only tool to bring out the difficulties and problems , with a foreseeable increase in acts of self-harm and suicide.”
