Prisoner ombudsman: 64,000 in prison in Italy, 95 per cent are men

With regard to offences, using the Dap classification, a total of 155,808 offences were recorded, of which 40,732 (26.14%) related to foreigners. The crimes for which the prison doors are mainly opened are those against property: 36,864 (23.66% of the total), while those against the person involve 29,108 detained persons (18.68% of the total), with 9,435 foreigners (22.94% of the category). A typology in which serious crimes such as homicide, personal injury, violence are included.

Drug-related offences involved 21,724 persons deprived of their liberty (13.94% of the total), with 6,194 foreigners (15.21% of the category).

As for the mothers deprived of their libertywith accompanying children, there are 21 of them, with 25 children living in prison with them. A significant fact concerns the foreign component: 10 of the 21 mothers (45.7%) and 12 of the 25 children (48%) are not Italian. A complex reality on which the Consulta has intervened (sentences 18/2020, 174/2018, and 17/2017, 10/2014 ) indicating the path of the greatest possible use of home detention or of alternative measures. 

Most recently, with sentence 52/2025, the judge of laws intervened on the prison system, in favour of detained fathers, branding as constitutionally illegitimate the prohibition to grant the father home detention when he is the only one who can take care of his children. A step backwards with respect to the recommendation to avoid"affective desertification" made by the Consulta came with the Security Decree 48/2025, which made deferment of punishment optional instead of obligatory for mothers with children under one year of age, providing the possibility of detention inIndustries with attenuated custody (Icam).

Unfortunately, the topic of overcrowding is always topical, with an index calculated at 138% on a national basis. Specifically, out of a total of 189 institutes surveyed, 4 are in a critical overcrowded condition (over 200%), while 61 have an occupancy rate of over 150%. There are 101 institutes between 100% and 150% and only 23 facilities operate below the regulatory capacity.

Turning the spotlight on the long-standing problem, which has already cost Italia a conviction with the Torregiani pilot ruling, is once again the Antigone association, which has highlighted the illegal situation in Italy's prisons due to overcrowding. "The case of Gianni Alemanno, who has 39 days off his sentence for being subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, is just one of the thousands of appeals accepted in recent years. Only in 2024, the last data available so far, 5,837 prisoners had been granted a sentence discount for similar reasons, generally due to the fact that they had been imprisoned in cells lacking the minimum space of 3 square metres per person. At the end of 2024, there were 61,861 people held in Italian prisons. In March this year there were 64,000, so it is easy to foresee how the number of successful appeals will grow'.

Antigone, a few weeks ago, had launched the"Inhuman and degrading" campaign asking "the Government and Parliament (also through a petition signed so far by 1,700 people) to intervene immediately with reforms necessary to guarantee detention conditions that respect human rights".

Today, the numbers of accepted appeals are higher than the 4,000 presented at the time of the Torreggiani sentence, 'and yet,' Antigone concludes, 'despite the need for urgent interventions, prison is only looked at as a horizon for penal-populist policies. And, in the meantime, the Italia State is condemned by the Surveillance Courts'.