Wrongful imprisonment: the number of claims and the amounts involved are rising

There has been an increase, albeit a slight one, in repair requests for wrongful imprisonment. With an acceptance rate of just over 40 per cent and an increase in the amounts paid out by the State. The Ministry of Justice, in response to a question from Enrico Costa, leader of the Forza Italia group in the Chamber of Deputies, has provided the Justice Committee with the final figures, covering the whole of 2025 for the first time. A hot-button issue during the referendum campaign, yet one that remains highly topical in a context characterised by the perpetual crisis in conditions of imprisonment.

More specifically, the Courts of Appeal registered a total of 1,196 applications for compensation for wrongful imprisonment, compared with 1,154 in 2024, representing an increase of 3.6 per cent. Of the cases concluded, 647 (42.9 per cent) were concluded with the claim being upheld; 771, or 51.1 per cent, were concluded with the claim being dismissed; 91, or 6 per cent, were resolved in other ways (for example, on grounds of inadmissibility or lack of territorial jurisdiction). There were 576 orders granting the application that became final during the year, compared with 507 in 2024 and 465 in 2023.

Although these figures are somewhat at odds with the standard Report on Precautionary Measures and Wrongful Imprisonment, the Ministry does provide data on compensation for judicial errors: in 2025, 13 new applications were filed and 14 cases were resolved; seven were concluded with the application being upheld, compared with three in 2024 and six in 2023. Six were dismissed, compared with 11 in 2024 and four in 2023.

As regards the amounts paid out, in 2025 the figure stood at 28,677,633 euros, with an average amount per order of 44,255 euros. This figure represents a slight increase compared with the just under 27 million paid out in 2024; however, the Ministry does not regard this as alarming, as it considers the ‘sum to be substantially in line with expenditure over the previous three-year period, confirming the sharp decline already recorded in previous years’. In fact, last year too, the Courts of Appeal that recorded the highest expenditure were those of Palermo with €3,506,237, Reggio Calabria with 8,749,125 and Catanzaro with 4,983,260.

On the obviously sensitive and controversial issue of the disciplinary liability of magistrates, it was, moreover, the Ministry’s own Report that emphasised how ‘not even the careful monitoring carried out by the General Inspectorate of orders granting applications for compensation for wrongful imprisonment – which is extensively cited in this Report – has revealed any correlation between the aforementioned orders and disciplinary offences committed by magistrates’.