Justice

Endless emergency for prisons but growing number of alternative measures

Political forces incapable of shared solutions in parliament. From 2020 the gap between prisoners and those serving their sentences outside increases

by Giovanni Negri

3 July 2025

3' min read

Key points

The numbers of alternative measures
Other forms of intervention

3' min read

With the arrival of the first hot weather emergency nothing is more hypocritically recurrent than the seasonal attention of politics for prison living conditions. They are unlikely to be significantly improved by the Ministry of Justice's announcement that it has started the procedure for the purchase of one thousand 'cockpit' freezers to be allocated to prisons. Especially in the face of a situation that sees 62,761 inmates (2,737 women, 19,810 foreigners) in 190 institutes, against a regulatory capacity of 51,296.

A plastic demonstration of the failure of politics, majority and opposition, is the extraordinary sitting of the Chamber of Deputies last March. A sitting where, instead of sounding out possible broad understandings for concrete solutions, the climate was once again one of mutual opposition in the shifting of responsibilities. But if there is one issue that calls into question, over time, all the political forces, it is undoubtedly prison.

Because if it is true that a year after the prison decree of the Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio, and a few weeks after a security decree that multiplies crimes and penalties, nothing has changed and the numbers remain dramatic (27 suicides in 2025 per the Guarantor of Detained Persons), not even the opposition has credible papers to make a credible accusation, only to recall the inability, for simple electoral convenience, to follow up on one of the best-prepared reforms, that of the prison system, the outcome of the States-General of Penal Execution in 2016.

And so, while somewhat more incisive interventions such as the Giachetti law proposal on early release have been languishing for some time without prospects in Parliament, it is of the various alternative forms of detention that it is best to check the expansion.

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The numbers of alternative measures

As of 31 December 2024, according to the Ministry of Justice, there were 93,880 persons in alternative measure to detention, on probation or sentenced to alternative punishment, with approximately 80 per cent Italians and 20 per cent foreigners; 61,861 detainees. Altogether, over 100,000 persons were in charge of the Offices for External Criminal Execution (Uepe). The largest part of the non-custodial penal measures is occupied by probation to social service, probation and different types of work of public utility (substitution, for violations of the Highway Code and of the Narcotics Act). Altogether, more than 70,000 persons have had access to these three measures (data as at 31 December 2024).

It was 2020 that marked a turnaround, the year in which the number of persons in the external penal area began to exceed that of prisoners: 60,204 and 53,364 respectively. Measures to reduce Covid-19 infections have encourageddischarges from prisons, and at the same time boosted the use of non-custodial sentences. Growth is stabilising, the ministry points out, and, from 2022, is faster.

The external criminal area is set to grow further, mainly due to regulatory interventions favouring measures other than prison. Among others, it is the Cartabia reform of the Code of Criminal Procedure that has the greatest impact, with the introduction of sanctions in lieu of short prison sentences (semi-release, home detention, work in public interest), these three measures together affecting about 7,000 people on 15 June, and the extension of the institution of probation to specific offences punished with a maximum sentence of less than six years, with about 28,000 people affected as of 15 June.

Other forms of intervention

All to be verified instead because they are entrusted to measures yet to come, which have been announced for some time, other forms of intervention, even if only a few days ago relaunched by Nordio. First of all, a differentiated detention for drug addicts; then the expiation of the sentence for foreigners in their countries of origin; again, reception facilities for prisoners who meet the requirements for access to alternative measures to detention but lack the socio-economic conditions. Finally, the reform ofpreventive custody for non-organised crime offences.