Inmates in the northern Italian city of Parma are on a hunger strike over poor sanitation and overcrowding, the latest demonstration in a spate of protests in the country’s jails where occurrences of suicide and self-harm are at its peak.
Giorgia Meloni’s hard-right government has responded to this by warning to make even peaceful protesting, a criminal offence. This threat has been tagged a draconian crackdown and experts have said it has no parallel in any other Western democracy.
Unfortunately, this move is among a raft of law-and-order initiatives by Meloni, instituting new crimes and stiffening penalties for existing ones ahead of the European parliament elections coming up in June.
If a little-noticed clause in a government security bill becomes law, inmates like those in Parma who beat on their cell bars or refuse to work or eat could see their jail time increases, a prospect that deeply worries both legal experts and prison workers.
These people say that the real problem faced by Italy’s prisons include being overcrowded and understaffed. These issues make it hard for inmates to access health, psychiatric and educational services and as a result, psychological problems are common, morale is also low and protests are frequent, either for personal reasons or over the poor living conditions.
Angela Della Bella, a criminal law professor at Milan University, had reacted to the President’s warning, saying that adding new crimes and longer sentences to the penal code will mean even more overcrowded courts and more prison overcrowding, worsening and exacerbating an already critical situation.
Italy’s prisons was reported to have accommodated almost 61,000 inmates at the end of January, some 10,000 persons over its official capacity, according to data from Antigone, a prisoners’ welfare organisation.
At the same time there is a shortfall of almost 7,000, or 16%, in the prescribed workforce of guards.
