Naples – "A barbaric act," an "inhumanity" that "some people boast about." Samuele Ciambriello, Campania's guarantor for those subjected to restrictive measures, doesn't mince his words when he denounces the plight of mothers detained in Italy.
Today, 28 mothers (some of them pregnant) are living in prison in Italy, along with their 26 children. The already alarming numbers reveal a crisis concentrated in specific facilities, such as the women's prisons of Rebibbia and Bollate and the ICAM (Institutes with Reduced Custody for Mothers) in Milan, Turin, Venice, and Lauro.
The crisis at Lauro's ICAM
It is precisely the situation at the Lauro (AV) facility in Campania that has raised the most serious alarm. Eight mothers are held there, but four of them are pregnant. Ciambriello's complaint exposes a serious health and human rights breach: three women are between the fourth and sixth months of pregnancy, while one is about to give birth, posing a potential and serious risk of infection.
The paradox, the Guarantor emphasizes, is that in a facility designed to accommodate women in these conditions "there is no working gynecologist" and "there is also no permanent pediatrician."
In Lauro, in addition to the pregnant women, there are "six innocent children in prison." Ciambriello's question is rhetorical and scathing: "Why not in a foster home? No boy or girl should grow up behind bars."
"Criminal Populism" and the Indictment of the Security Decree
For the Campania Guarantor, this situation is not an accident, but the result of a specific political choice, which he defines as "criminal, political, and media populism." He points the finger at the Security Decree.
"It was the Security Decree that gave the green light to imprison pregnant women," thunders Ciambriello. The law, he explains, changed a principle of legal civilization, making "the deferral of sentences for pregnant women and those with children under 3 optional, rather than mandatory."
A decision taken, according to the Guarantor, in response to "a social alarm campaign", but which is now producing inhumane effects.
"The child is a separate entity"
Ciambriello's complaint concludes with a reflection that gets to the heart of the problem, separating justice from social vengeance and the mother's crime from the son's fate.
"What are the sins of the children of imprisoned mothers? And if even a pregnant woman has committed a crime, can prison really be the only answer?"
The final appeal is an attempt to rally consciences against what Ciambriello calls an intolerable trend: "We can and must help these children who are unjustly too old. The child is a separate entity, not one with the mother. This is barbaric."
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