New prisons are not a structural solution to overcrowding

The commissioners took immediate action on behalf of five prisoners. For example, they requested the transfer of the paraplegic prisoner from Foggia, whose cell lacked adequate toilet facilities and who was unable to access the prison yard in his wheelchair. For the rest of the prison population, the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture – whilst noting the measures taken – sets out a long list of recommendations to promote, amongst other things, alternative measures to tackle overcrowding or adequate staff training. It calls for updates on the implementation of the Prison Plan, highlights healthcare provision that is at times inadequate and, in any case, inconsistent, and sets out all the necessary refurbishments in the five prisons visited: Foggia, Avellino, Santa Maria Capua Vetere (Ce), Genoa-Marassi and Florence. As for Sollicciano, he is categorical: ‘not fit’, he declares, before suggesting a cost-benefit analysis of its sustainability.

There are problems within the Italian prison system, but there are also efforts being made to tackle some of them, in the latest report by the Council of Europe’s human rights monitoring body, the seventeenth such report on the peninsula since 1992 (8 periodic visits, 9 ad hoc visits, such as this latest one in September 2025). At that time, there were 63,198 prisoners with overcrowding at 135 per cent (today there are 66,309, with overcrowding at 142 per cent) and 76 suicides (in 2026, there have been 63 as of yesterday, the latest in Trapani). A scourge against which the effectiveness of even ‘robust protocols’ could be undermined by ‘low levels of attendance among healthcare staff, a lack of a national strategy to reduce “ligature points” (those structural features where it is most possible to carry out acts of self-harm) and the absence of call systems inside cells’. The figures from the government’s Prison Plan (10,000 places by 2027 at a cost of 1.3 billion) are set out below, and whilst we welcome this and other measures – such as the transfer of drug addicts to therapeutic communities – they cannot help but note that ‘to date, these have had no tangible impact on reversing the growth of the prison population’. And that, in any case, ‘building new prisons will not provide a lasting solution to the problem of overcrowding’.

This situation is placing pressure on staff, despite the recruitment drive. With regard to prison officers, the Committee recommends adequate training in ‘recognised methods of control and restraint in accordance with the principle of proportionality’ and in verbal de-escalation; it also requests information on the remit of the new intervention teams following reports of alleged violence by five prisoners in Genoa after the unrest in June 2025. The Department of Prison Administration states that its Inspectorate investigated 11 alleged cases of ill-treatment last year, which were referred to the judicial authorities.

One chapter is devoted to women in prison: it reiterates the need for a gender-sensitive approach, but praises the ICAM (a low-security facility for mothers with children) in Lauro (Av). It had been closed down suddenly by the government and then suddenly reopened.