Visit to the Poggioreale prison on the day of Ferragosto (in particular in the pavilions Naples, Italy, Genoa, Florence) for the Campania guarantor of the prisoners Samuele Ciambriello. There were 2.064 prisoners on an official capacity of 1639 places, that is to say over 400 people detained more than the capacity of the institute.
“First of all – Ciambriello explained at the end of the visit – I want to thank the prison police officers who, despite their small number, with professionalism, made my visit as Guarantor possible.
I have found overcrowding, which means that in a cell with bunk beds stacked three high we can find even 10-12 people, but also the impossibility of promptly guaranteeing the detainees adequate social and health interventions with respect to their needs.
The first point I would like to highlight is the need for routine maintenance interventions in the departments that ensure respect for human dignity and, as far as possible, privacy, and meet the minimum conditions required in terms of health and hygiene, taking into account the climatic conditions.
I am forced to point out that in some departments it is not possible to guarantee hot showers, just as in many cells there are still evident signs of mold and humidity that make the environments unhealthy. In some cases it is then necessary to proceed with an extraordinary restructuring that adapts the detention departments to what is provided for by the same penitentiary enforcement regulation and the indications of the Court of Human Rights.
There are resources that have been allocated for many years but we can't use them. I wonder how this is possible and why we can't find a solution."
“The second point I would like to draw attention to – he continued – is the urgency of proceeding immediately with a rodent control because we have been informed and confirmed of the presence of rats entering the detention wards with very serious risks for the inmates and the staff.
Just as I believe that a disinfestation is also necessary for the presence of cockroaches. Third point, on which I intend to open a permanent discussion table, are the levels of health care and the presence of medical and specialist personnel able to offer health services that ensure adequate care of the person and that take into account the greater difficulty of access to care and greater complexity due to the deprivation of freedom.
It is unthinkable that we wait months for an urgent x-ray or a specialist visit, that multi-professional medical care is not guaranteed in every department. I also find it essential, given the high number of prisoners with mental health problems, to strengthen interventions for the prevention, treatment and support of mental distress”.
Ciambriello finally launches an appeal to politics and penitentiary institutions at various levels, but also to individual citizens so that there are new political and cultural provisions and assumptions on prison and its use as a last resort:
“I know that this is a long list of critical issues and that not all of them can be resolved in the short term. However, we cannot resign ourselves to this state of affairs, we all can and must do more and do better.
A detained person loses his freedom, he cannot and must not lose the dignity of being a human being. Considering that prison in many cases is poison rather than medicine, the real remedy consists in drastically reducing employment, with less pre-trial detention in prison, and then using more alternative measures to prison by the surveillance magistrates, decriminalizing minor crimes and avoiding combining penal populism with political populism”.
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