Semi-free detainees. There is still room to work (31/01/2023)

On December 31, 700 prisoners who had lived outside the prison in the previous two years returned to sleep in their cells. government led Georgia Meloni In fact, I decided not to extend the procedure in Cura Italia Decreewhich with the outbreak COVID-19 pandemic and the need to increase social distancing within correctional institutions, and it provided for the granting of exceptional licenses to those under semi-liberty regimes, with a waiver of the 45-day limit per year and a guarantee that they would not return to sleep in prison until June 30, 2020. In this way it was avoided Possible mixing between inside and outside, which allowed people to return to prison who, by being outside, using public transportation, and visiting crowded places, could have transmitted the virus to prisons.

“For these semi-released prisoners, the end of the year was a return to their cells. What’s the point of all this fuss? What’s the point of going back to locking up people who’ve lived on an alternate scale for the past two and a half years, even if it’s only for the night? This does not mean the uncertainty of the sentence, but the certainty that the sentence will be carried out differently from imprisonment. People who are fully immersed in society, rebuilding the social networks, friendship and family that are often imprisoned, and creating a clear and radical detachment from the outside world, fall apart instead. So it makes sense to root it out social integration that has already occurred Is it effective? Patrizio Gonnella, president of the Antigone Society, says that if the punishment should aim at restoring the convict to his job, the answer one might give is no, it does not make much sense. the alternative measures It was conceived precisely for the sake of social protection, the fight against recidivism and the consequent increase in external security, meaningless in the face of the behavior of these people who have been able during the past two and a half years to restore the trust of the institutions in which they placed them, to respect the prescriptions that were imposed on them and not to return to committing other crimes.

“When a person is released from prison on the last day of his sentence – adds Gonella – it is a defeat for the system because he is more likely to return to committing a crime compared to those who have had the opportunity to gradually return to the world of work and other social contexts. Alternative measures are designed precisely with a view to social protectionAnd the fight against regression and the consequent increase in external security.

It doesn’t even make sense if you look at the state of the Italian prison system, where In 2022 there were 84 suicides, the highest number ever. Not forgetting the alarming overcrowding rates: in one year, from December 31, 2021 to December 31, 2022, there are an additional 2,000 prisoners, with with a crowding rate of approximately 110 percent. An official figure who often does not take into account places counted but not really available for work or renovations. These 700 families could have helped mitigate cases that have reached the limit in many prisons, as demonstrated in 2013 by the European Court of Human Rights, which, by Torrigiani’s ruling, found Italy guilty of violating Article 3 of the European Convention on the Rights of Human Rights. Human. (European Court of Human Rights), which states that “no one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Transfer Decree No. 198 of the Law of December 29, 2022 “Urgent Provisions on Legislative Deadlines,” which must be approved by February 27. The ruling could include a measure to ensure that 700 semi-free prisoners are back on the path to social reintegration, and to reverse this bad step backwards.