AND A disenchanted portrait, without sweetening of the state of the Italian prison system, the one that the President of the Republic Segio Mattarella has done, receiving a delegation of the prison police. “Every day,” said the president, “try to fulfill your commitment with sacrifice and professionalism. Commitment made even more difficult by Different conditions of the prison system, marked by a serious – and now unsustainable – condition of overcrowding as well as by the inadequate structural conditions of many institutes, in which maintenance and renovation interventions are needed. Interventions to be embedded urgently, in the awareness that space cannot be conceived only as a place of custody, but must include environments intended for sociality, affectivity, the planning of the treatment. All this requires a particular professional commitment. And thank you for the dedication you pour into your task ».
The Mattarella of “other difficulties” speaks to the prison police, who, he says, “know well, weigh on your functions, on your tasks. Difficulties that other institutions are also asked. The deficiency of organic, which has long been a critical condition of the penitentiary system, and which concerns the body, and concerns all operators. I think of the severe insufficiency of the number of educators, the difficult access to health care within the institutes, especially for prisoners with mental health problems “.
He also knows what the solutions would be: «The institutes must be equipped with new and more adequate professionalism. Otherwise, your task will also inevitably be weighed down and burdened by an improper overload of functions that should be entrusted to others ».
Remember the constitutional values: «Places of detention must not be transformed into the gym for new crimes; in the crime training gym; nor in hopeless places, but they must actually be aimed at recovering those who have made a mistake. It is not only a matter of principle but also of foresight: «Every recovered prisoner is equivalent to a security advantage for the communityin addition to being the objective of a well -known, declaredly constitutional commitment “. Investments are needed, in order to guarantee a dignified level of life and the treatment of prisoners and, at the same time, better conditions of the work that you do with scruple. They are necessary and far -sighted investments, because they are addressed – I repeat – to guarantee greater safety to citizens”.
The hint of the security falls a few hours after the controversies that arose following the report of the ceiling of the Cassation on the so -called Security Decree and on the doubts of constitutionality it raises. It does not seem random in a historical period in which those who govern tend to identify the theme of safety mainly with repression and with the raising of penalties, with an extension of prison penalties. “It is particularly important that the prison system has the necessary, human and financial resources, to ensure each prisoner a treatment and a custody regime that merge on rules based on current assessments for each, with the objective addressed to the future”.
“It is dramatic,” said the president, “the number of suicides in prisons, which has not been arrested for too long. It is a real social emergency, on which you need to ask yourself to end you immediately. “All this,” the president tells the agents, “must be done out of respect for the values of our Constitution; out of respect for your work; by respect for the history of the prison police force; For respect for his fallen: victims of terrorism, crime. And that we remember with emotion ».
Words that fall close to days of commemorations, increasingly tormented, by via D’Amelio and a time when in the public debate it keeps the intention to give the police forces a criminal shield. Better to act upstream, it seems to say between the lines, Mattarella, preventing dangerous and tension situations, than after when the damage is done. The updated data confirm the situation described by the President.
According to Antigone’s latest report, “Italy is placed well above the European average as regards suicides in prison. According to the last data of the Council of Europe, in 2022 the suicide rate in Italian prisons was more than double the European average: 15 cases every 10,000 people held, against an average of 7.2 cases “. In the face of an average of suicides lower than the EU average of free people.
While On the subject of crowding, the data updated to 30 June 2025 speak of a rate of 134.27%, with 62,727 prisoners, out of 51,276 regulatory places, of which available: 46,717. Only in recent days, with the heat, did intolerable situations emerge in chronicle: hot cells, without water. While the criminalization of the also of non -violent passive protest is discussed in the security decree in the security decree in the institutes. A reality that of overcrowding that also has a cost not only social if it is true that Italy, for its prison system not up to the expected supranational rules, has stuck several times in sanctions by Europe.
