Security Decree, Council of Criminal Chambers: abstention from hearings 5-6-7 May

The junta of the Union of Italian Criminal Chambers (Ucpi) resolves 'to abstain from hearings and all judicial activities on 5, 6 and 7 May 2025'. This was decided by the council critical of the security package launched by the government. The Union of Italian Criminal Chambers is an organisation representing Italian lawyers practising in the field of criminal law.

The council reserves "to take every possible initiative that, through the involvement of the territorial Penal Chambers, of the whole Bar, of the Academy and of the civil society, pursues the objective of making the representatives of the government and of the parliament aware of the responsibility assumed through the re-proposal of useless and unfair securitarian and prison-centric policies which have no effect whatsoever on the security standard of the community, and of the responsibility incumbent on them for any individual who, by reason of his status as a prisoner, suffers in prison conditions that are contrary to a sense of humanity'.

On the website of the Union of the Criminal Chambers we read that 'Worse than the "DDL security" there is only the Security Decree'. "The removal of the legislative initiative from its ordinary parliamentary forum denounces, once again, the abuse of urgent decrees in criminal matters. The Junta's document," it reads. "Notwithstanding the announced changes, all the critical aspects of the 'security package' denounced by the Union of Italian Criminal Chambers relating to the unnecessary introduction of new offence hypotheses, to the many disproportionate and unjustified increases in sentences, to the introduction of aggravating factors lacking any rational basis, to the criminalisation of marginality and dissent, and to the introduction of new obstacles to the application of alternative measures to detention, remain in fact."

"The entry into force of these controversial regulations, which violate the constitutional principles of proportionality, reasonableness, offensiveness and taxation, will only increase the prison population, further exacerbating the phenomenon of overcrowding and definitively collapsing facilities that are now at the end of their tether, as denounced by the almost daily suicides, which have now reached 26 since the beginning of the year. The subtraction of the legislative initiative from its ordinary parliamentary seat denounces, once again, how it is a matter of ostentatiously symbolic interventions and as such devoid of any real effectiveness and which, despite the title, have nothing to do with any real increase in the security of citizens".