Naples – It's not just a matter of numbers, but of human dignity being trampled upon daily. A grim picture emerged from the inspection conducted this morning by Ilaria Salis, MEP for the Italian Left and the Greens, inside the Poggioreale prison.
The report released at the end of the visit is a veritable cahier de doléances certifying the collapse of the penitentiary system in the largest prison in Southern Italy.
Overcrowding: The Mathematics of Inhumanity
The most alarming statistic is the chronic overcrowding, which at Poggioreale reaches unsustainable levels. Despite a regulatory capacity of 1.313 places, the facility currently houses 2.185 inmates. This disproportionate situation transforms detention into a mere physical survival, negating any possibility of constitutionally guaranteed rehabilitation.
"Up to 12 people live in some cells," Salis reports, describing scenes that hark back to dark times. Inmates are crammed into three-tiered bunk beds, a configuration formally prohibited in Italy, but which the emergency has made standard practice. This systematically violates the European standard requiring at least 3 square meters of floor space for each inmate. In those cells, living space simply isn't there.
Structural degradation: between mold and mice
In addition to the lack of space, the inspection revealed serious deterioration of the structure itself. The walls are covered in mold, hot water is a luxury that isn't always guaranteed, and with winter approaching, the heating is non-functional.
The presence of rats in the detention units completes the picture of degraded sanitation. "Detainees rightly complain about inhumane living conditions," the MEP emphasizes, highlighting how the punishment is turning into physical and psychological torture.
The paradox of short sentences and staff shortages
Ilaria Salis's analysis then shifts to possible solutions, highlighting a bureaucratic paradox. Of the 1.066 inmates with final convictions, 560 are serving sentences of less than four years. These are people who, on paper, would be entitled to alternative measures to detention, but remain behind bars for "various bureaucratic reasons."
Managing this social powder keg is dramatically understaffed. The most critical figure concerns the education department: there are only 20 educators for over two thousand inmates. With a ratio of one educator for every two hundred inmates, talk of treatment, reintegration, or care becomes pure rhetoric.
The appeal to politics
Despite the lauded efforts of the Ser.D. (Addiction Services), which operates under "enormous" workload, the situation requires a radical change of pace.
"The urgency is clear to anyone working in the prison system, but unfortunately it is not equally widespread in politics and certainly not in the current government," Salis concludes bitterly.
The demand is clear: immediate "deflationary" measures are needed. Not new prisons, but the enforcement of existing laws to empty the existing ones, restoring legality to a place that should teach it, but today seems to have forgotten it.
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