Frosinone, 28 June 2024 – “Unfortunately, yesterday in the prisons of Lazio was a very critical day not only in Regina Coeli, but since we learned yesterday in Frosinone prison – an Italian prisoner, 21 years old subjected to TSO several times he committed suicide by inhaling gas.” The news was given by the general secretary of the Fns Cisl Lazio, Massimo Costantino.
“For the Fns Cisl Lazio these prisoners should not be in prison – explains Costantino – but in suitable hospital facilities, treated but certainly not under the watchful eye of the Penitentiary Police which is not responsible for this task but for other structures and professionals – and here politics and the ASL are absent – much more needs to be done since the OPGs were closed – as if the problem did not exist, unloading the problem onto the Penitentiary Police. The situation is also critical in the NC CC Civitavecchia where yesterday morning at around 10:30 there were 4 officers attacked like this, also an inmate by another inmate armed with a fake knife“.
Currently the regional overcrowding is increasing compared to the previous month and is now 1,498 prisoners considering that there are 6,779 prisoners held in the 14 Institutes of Lazio, compared to a regulatory capacity of 5,281 prisoners. Also yesterday at the IPM “Casal del Marmo” there was yet another major brawl between Maghreb prisoners – adds the general secretary – Overcrowding is also recorded in the juvenile circuit IPM Rome with 62 minors and it should be remembered that in juvenile prisons there are no differentiated circuits and this makes the work very expensivewhere prisoners with psychopathologies, addiction problems and other pathologies and different ethnicities in relatively narrow spaces raises the level of tension. The few remaining police officers are forced to work grueling shifts without turnover or assignment of new units.
What is expected is a very heavy summer season, because Prisoner overcrowding increases day by day and the deficiencies in the provision of prison police personnel they are reaching levels that have hardly been recorded. And it is precisely in the Lazio region that we see an extreme situation with shortages of 930 missing in the region’s penitentiaries, i.e. almost 20% of the national figure.
Currently there is a shortage of Penitentiary Police personnel in the Lazio Regionand approximately 930 units divided as follows: CC CASSINO – 55; CR CIVITAVECCHIA – 15; CC NC CIVITAVECCHIA -54; CC FROSINONE – 46; CC LATINA -12 ; CR PALIANO -10; CC NC RIETI -59; CR REBIBBIA – 62; NC CC REBIBBIA – 183; 3rd CC REBIBBIA -20; CCF REBIBBIA – 45; CC REGINA COELI – 188; CC VELLETRI – 89; CC VITERBO – 92″.
“Further interventions are needed by the Government,” concludes Costantino, “because those already implemented last year with peaks of new hirings – finally – never seen before in these numbers, are insufficient to manage what is now a serious emergency“.
