Suicide in prison, compensation for entering without a psychologist

The ministry of Justice must compensate the family of the detainee who suicide the morning after he entered prison, which occurred without meeting the psychologist or educator. In addition, the boy, who had been remanded in custody, had been placed in a cell alone, although supervised, and not, as ordered by the Prosecutor, with other inmates. Omissions that, according to the judges, have the value of a 'causal link' with the suspect's tragic end. The Court of Cassation, with sentence 29319, rejected the appeal by Via Arenula, against the decision of the Court of Appeal to recognise, after a proceeding that lasted 15 years, compensation to the man's mother and brothers. The ministry's request to give weight to the testimony of prison staff was futile. The Supreme Court recalls, in fact, that "no probative value can be attributed, in a dispute concerning the contested fulfilment of the obligations incumbent on the prison administration, to the statements made by the prison staff, who had every interest in excluding any charge of responsibility for what had happened". Nor does the justification of the time of entry into the facility, 9.30 p.m., for the absence of the psychologist and the educator pass. The Ministry denies the prison administration's responsibility, as did the Court of First Instance, considering the suicide an 'exceptional and unforeseeable factor taking into account the peculiarities of the concrete case'. The boy on arrival had, in fact, been examined by the doctor on duty, and considered a person with a low suicide risk. During the night the officer on duty had passed several times in front of the cell and had always seen him calm. Constant and repeated checks, due to the 'heavy surveillance' regime, had continued until 6.50 am. Around 7 a.m. his body had been found. The same Prosecutor had then considered the generic suicide intention manifested, only on that occasion, as not particularly significant, also in view of the man's previous experience in prison where he had spent five years in the past.

For the Supreme Court, these are not convincing arguments. The Supreme Court, already referring the case back to the Court of Appeal - which had at first excluded the administration's failures and then affirmed them - had considered "it was undisputable, from a causal point of view, that if (....) had been subjected to a regime of common detention, as, moreover, expressly requested by the public prosecutor, his suicidal intentions would have been prevented or, in any case, made much more difficult to achieve by the presence of other detainees". Nor could the late hour be a justification to take away the importance of a decisive circumstance: the absence at the arrival of the psychologist and the educator to subject the person in custody to a "functional observation to verify his ability to cope adequately with the state of restriction". According to the Court of Cassation, the failure to do so violated Article 23 of the Prison Ordinance (Presidential Decree 230/2000), according to which "an expert in observation and treatment shall carry out an interview with the detainee or interned person upon his or her entry into the institution in order to verify whether, and if so with what precautions, he or she can adequately cope with the state of detention". The Ministry took a different view, considering that it had 24 hours to comply with an obligation, which was inexcusable given the time of arrival in the 'new arrivals' section.