The Government's plan for Article 41 bis is official: seven "exclusively dedicated" institutions, three in Sardinia.
Undersecretary Delmastro confirmed at the State-Regions Conference: "The overall national number of prisoners will not increase, but the island's share will."
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Cagliari-Uta, Bancali and Badu 'e Carros will be structures "exclusively dedicated" to prisoners under the 41 bis regime .
What until now was only an alarm raised by the Sardinian centre-left without any official confirmation is now written in black and white in the minutes of the State-Regions Conference of last December 18, during which there was a heated confrontation between the Ministry of Justice represented by Undersecretary Andrea Delmastro and the Sardinia Region represented by Councillor Rosanna Laconi .
The government, Delmastro explains, aims to host only inmates under the strict prison regime in the three main Sardinian institutions , as part of a radical transformation of the maximum security prison system necessary "to respond to new public order needs and constitutional obligations".
The project calls for overcoming the current model, which sees the 750 inmates under the 41-bis regime housed in 12 facilities, almost all of which are interconnected with other detention centers. The goal is to concentrate them in just seven "exclusively dedicated" facilities, "preferably in island areas," and managed solely by specialized units of the GOM (Mobile Operations Group) . This reorganization, the Via Arenula team emphasizes, is made even more urgent by Constitutional Court ruling 30 of 2025, which mandates that inmates be guaranteed at least four hours of outdoor space, a requirement difficult to meet in interconnected facilities.
Sardinia will play a central role in this plan, where three of the seven identified institutions are located: Sassari, Nuoro, and Cagliari-Uta . The minutes state that Sardinia currently has 192 places for 41-bis placements. The undersecretary hypothesized that, while the overall national number will not increase, the Sardinian quota could increase , which Delmastro estimated at approximately 20% .
What is certain is that Sardinia is the most sacrificed region: in Piedmont, where there were two mixed institutes (Cuneo and Novara), only one exclusively dedicated one will remain, in Alessandria ; in Lazio, whose education authority also includes Abruzzo, the number will go from 3 to 1 (L'Aquila); in Umbria, there were 2, but there won't be even one ; in Emilia Romagna, Parma will remain; in Lombardy, one will remain, Vigevano; in Sardinia, there were three and three will remain .
Councilor Laconi criticized the Region's lack of involvement in the decision-making process and expressed three main concerns: criminal infiltration, with inmates' families moving to the island; Sardinia becoming a penal colony (with the remembrance of Asinara); and healthcare ("We don't have facilities capable of responding to this increase in the prison population. I know what it means when a 41 bis prisoner enters the emergency room, everything grinds to a halt").
Delmastro countered by arguing that the plan "adds security" rather than removing it, because the exclusive management of GOMs reduces the risks inherent in mixed-use facilities. On the healthcare front , Delmastro called on the Region to establish dedicated units for prisoners in every provincial capital , as required by law and already implemented by other regions such as Lazio, Lombardy, and Sicily.
(Unioneonline/L)
