172. Prisons: Overcrowding

Not only the prisoners, but also a few journalists have recently made their voices heard that there is an exaggeration of overcrowding in prisons here in Italy. One of these journalist is my favourite TV presenter, Emilio Fede of Rete 4 Italian national TV. He claims that even though incarcerated, people are still human beings and although they have lost all civil rights they have not lost the one of human dignity.

The massive overcrowding, there may well be 60 thousand prisoners in a jail which can house at most 40 thousand, causes friction, conflict and tempers short. I know life should not be pleasant in jail but at times there is such a thing as testing mankind’s patience to the limit.

This overcrowding forces the authorities to practice the policy of “indulto” that is “pardons” which in itself is a dangerous phenomena as with no guarantee of punishment, criminals will certainly go on a spending spree, if it can be termed as such.

The problem is that jails were constructed in days gone by for a population which is half the size it has reached today and strangely enough the rise in crime coincides with the same relative percentage as the rise in population.

Italy has never been a land of opportunity for it has no raw materials on which to maintain herself or illegal immigrants for that matter. So the construction of prisons cannot take priority to other much more needed state buildings as hospitals and schools. So Italy has had to rely on contributions from the European community, from those countries who do have natural raw materials and other resources not available in Italy. Of course, other countries are in the same position, Greece, Ireland, Spain.

But what I know up to now is that the European Community are withholding funds to Italy. I wonder if the fact that the government have won out because of its policy against crime and want to see more criminals under lock and key, have anything to do with it? If any government is corroding with envy over the overwhelming success of the Italian government, all they have to do is adopt the same policy and crack down on those malefactors who have no regard for anyone’s safety, property or well being.

Italy has proven if any political party wants a winning ticket to win electoral consensus they have to crack down on crime- and mean it. That is why when it comes to crime, European countries must all speak with one voice- none of this molly codling of avant-garde psychological excuses for not dealing out punishment when it is due. The first duty of any community is to protect its people from the onslaught of viciousness.

Statistics show, as tonight’s news stated, one prisoner in three comes from outside Italy. As I mentioned in the previous post, there are 60 thousands detainees for a prison which may contain at the most 40 thousand places, hence prisoners from abroad account for the extra third of overcrowding.

Italian Minister of Justice, Angelino Alfano has stated more than once that there will be no more “indulto” that is, “pardons” but that the European Community must intervene by creating the necessary treaties or giving resources to those member states that suffer most from this problem in a manner that will enable them to construct new jails.

The answer was not long in coming from the European Community. Although the management of justice is to be carried out by each state individually but the European Commission is ready to ensure the transferral of detainees from one member state to another.

The Rete 4 National TV journalist comments that one must ensure these treaties which are to be created will warrant detainees from abroad return to their country of origin where they will serve their sentence in full. Of this we have to be assured, since the greatest part of overcrowding is caused by detainees from another country.