Tensions are rising within the government over the hypothesis of a law studied by Minister Carlo Nordio, already described by critics as “emptying the prisons”. The state of emergency in Italian prisons reached a new peak in the days following August 15, when in Turin, six prison officers were injured during a riot and an escape attempt. To deal with the now chronic overcrowding of prisons, the ministry is considering facilitating the use of alternative measures to prison. A measure reserved for prisoners who must serve the remainder of their sentences within a year.
Released during the last year of his sentence
Nordio's proposal emerged on August 7, during his meeting with the Prisoner Guarantor and the regional guarantors. The idea is to resort to house arrest or pretrial detention for those who are in the last phase of detention, before their release. Precisely at a time when data on suicides in cells is increasing, according to data from the Antigone association. A concession, however, reserved only for those who have not been found guilty of obstruction offenses. It would therefore be possible for them to benefit from the alternative measure of deprivation of liberty without having to appeal to the Surveillance Court.
Government divided over prisons
For the moment, Nordio's hypothesis is supported more explicitly only by Forza Italia, which, on August 15, with its parliamentarians, visited the prisons with the militants of the Radical Party. Undersecretary Andrea Delmastro Delle Vedove, however, intervened to put an end to the idea of the Ministry of Justice: “A measure that, being a disposable measure, frustrates and frustrates not only and not so much the security needs that are not at the heart of the government, as much as and above all the re-educational function of punishment”. Delmastro then added: “The free plan for all does not re-educate, does not re-educate, does not guarantee security: it is the sadly seen and tiredly lived déjà vu of the past and which has given us the current situation”. On the part of the FdI, the line is to insist on the path of the Carceri decree, with a prison construction plan, which however knows moments apparently incompatible with the current state of prison emergency.
The suicide emergency in prison
Since the beginning of 2024 alone, there have been 63 suicides in prison. According to data from the Prisoners' Guarantor, 19 more people committed suicide in 2023. The average age is around 40, including 61 men and two women. The majority are Italian (52%), and often judged definitively sentenced (41.3%) or awaiting first trial (38.1%).
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