True re-education

"We should have a project for each person, prepare the time, the future, initiate positive personal processes, of awareness, of human construction and formation": Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, president of the CEI, underlines this. to the Report of the Guarantor of persons deprived of liberty presented in mid-June in Parliament. A long and detailed examination of the situation of men and women who are deprived of their liberty in Italy. «The prison or welfare system cannot be just containment - Zuppi emphasizes - because it can have an extraordinary function: to help regain time. And the prison structure must favor this ».

But "this" thought has to deal with crowded and inadequate institutions also in terms of spaces, where the inmates present, 54 thousand, are more than the regulatory beds (50,866) and those actually available due to of works and temporary closures (47,784). An oppressive system that creates situations of psychological distress (more than one prisoner a week commits suicide: 59 in 2021, and there are already 29 this year). The Guarantor's gaze rested on 190 prisons for adults, 41 facilities for minors, 10 detention hospital wards and 90 rooms, 31 residences, and over 2,000 security rooms of the police forces. Of the 38,897 inmates serving a final sentence, 1,319 are in jail for execution of a sentence of less than one year and another 2,473 for a sentence of one to two years.

"Serving such short sentences in prison in the presence of which our legal system provides alternative forms to detention - explained the Guarantor Mauro Palma - in fact makes the constitutional purpose of the sentences, which must be re-educational, merely enunciative" . An important issue on the agenda since the Minister of Justice Marta Cartabia took office and on which some responses have come with the penal reform, in particular with the sanctions in place of short prison sentences, up to four years, which will intervene to reduce overcrowding . And also with the strengthening of external criminal execution. The Guarantor again wanted to underline the importance of educational and cultural paths, fundamental tools in a process of reviewing behavior and inclusion. 476 inmates graduated last school year. There are 1,246 students enrolled in university courses, of which 153 are foreigners: they represent 2.3% of the prison population, an increase compared to 1.3% in 2018.


Chiara Genisio
NP June / July 2022