Mattarella: “Prison overcrowding is now unsustainable”

Your functions are "a complex and multifaceted panorama. Functions that you carry out in accordance with the Constitution and that are not limited to surveillance. I know that every day you try to fulfill your commitment with sacrifice and professionalism: a commitment made even more difficult by the worrying conditions of the prison system which is marked by a serious and now unsustainable condition of overcrowding ."

The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella , said this when he met the head of the Department of Penitentiary Administration and a representative of the Penitentiary Police at the Quirinale.

In prisons there is not only the problem of overcrowding, the Head of State continued, there is also the issue of "inadequate structural conditions in many institutions in which maintenance and restructuring interventions are necessary, interventions to be undertaken urgently in the awareness that space cannot be conceived only as a place of custody but must include environments intended for sociality, for activity, for the planning of treatment".

Mattarella continued: "The problem of suicides in prisons is dramatic and has shown no signs of stopping for too long: it is a real social emergency that we must question ourselves about in order to put an immediate end to all this. It must be done out of respect for the values ​​of the Constitution, out of respect for your work and the history of the penitentiary police".