The Ministry and the Department of Justice continue to relentlessly pour in male and female prisoners onto the island. October's data show a surge in foreign inmates, nearly 30%. Of the 2,547 inmates (for 2,479 places), 746, or 29.2%, are foreigners, mostly non-EU citizens, arriving on the island from other Italian detention facilities . This is a record, especially considering the 20.3% increase in the last month.

Maria Grazia Caligaris, president of the association “Socialismo Diritti Riforme” , made this known by examining the data published by the Ministry's Statistics Office and expressing «deep concern for the living conditions in the facilities, almost all of which exceed regulatory limits, and for the lack of educational staff and cultural mediators , without forgetting the presence of 41bis in Sassari and Nuoro and, soon, in Cagliari».

"Those suffering the most," SDR continues, "are, as always, the main prisons in Cagliari (188 foreigners out of 737 inmates - 25.5% for 561 places) and Sassari (172 foreigners out of 552 inmates (31.1%) for 458 places. The highest number is recorded in Mamone-Onanì, with 107 foreigners out of 192 inmates, equal to 56.2%. The island's prison system has now completely lost the image of an oasis that the Ministry has always sought to accredit, and instead takes on that of a place of "deportation" to a penitentiary servitude surrounded by the sea."

«Currently – observes Caligaris – the number of women in the Cagliari-Uta (32) and Sassari-Bancali (24) sections has also grown considerably without this having led to an improvement in services. Transfers often take place without people being able to take their clothes and personal belongings with them and they are forced to wait for months, and often to pay for the journey of luggage left in the prisons of origin».

Overcrowding leads to serious limitations in treatment activities, already deeply affected by ministerial centralism, which has assumed control of any social and cultural rehabilitation initiative. In reality, it is clear that there is an attempt underway to sideline Article 27 of the Constitution and the Penitentiary System for the sake of safety management. The lack of prison staff, with or without, and the resulting bureaucracy will lead to prisoners being locked up in cells, without rehabilitation activities. If this continues, concludes the president of SDR, detention will increasingly take on a punitive character as an end in itself, setting the system back 50 years.

(Unioneonline)

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