As the entire country celebrated the holiday of Ferragosto on Thursday, some politicians went to prisons to draw attention to the much-criticised living conditions that triggered a spike in suicides.
Every 15 August, the entire country of Italy seems to be on a break.
Across the Mediterranean country, shutters on stores, bars, and restaurants are padlocked and adorned with the orange “closed for holiday” signs. In all neighbourhoods except the ones popular with tourists, you can encounter nothing but the proverbial tumbleweeds.
It’s Ferragosto, the hallowed holiday Italians will readily say recalls Roman times — a celebration emperor Augustus bestowed on his people, including slaves, as a reward for a season of hard work in the fields.
In Italy today, celebrating Ferragosto by spending the whole day at the beach or lazying away in the shade amounts to nothing less than a human right.
Yet, on 15 August, some Italian politicians decide to spend the day in jail instead — of their own volition. And for the sake of human rights of those less fortunate.
In a custom established by the late politician, activist and journalist Marco Pannella, politicians have been giving up their day off to draw attention to adverse prison conditions, something that President Sergio Mattarella said was “unseemly for a civilised country” only weeks ago.
This year, liberal MP Matteo Renzi, Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri and the late Pannella’s colleagues from his Radical Party were among those spending time with inmates.
‘It’s not a serious policy’
Renzi returned to his home town of Firenze for the day Thursday to go to the overcrowded Sollicciano prison, where he said half of some 500 inmates are held while still awaiting final sentencing.
“Facilities like Sollicciano should be torn down and rebuilt from scratch,” he said in a post on X, “to guarantee human conditions to those imprisoned.”
A former prime minister himself, he spared no words in his criticism of the government of Giorgia Meloni, who recently tried to alleviate some of the issues by promising to build new prisons, bump prison staff numbers and simplify the process for early release, among other things.
However, the law passed in early August has also further criminalised a number of offences, including the infamous anti-rave measure, penalising those organising parties — or what the law calls the “invasion of land or buildings with danger to public health or public safety” — with up to six years in prison.
The far-right leader of Lega, Matteo Salvini, was one of the anti-rave law’s fiercest advocates when it was first passed in late 2022.
Squatting, or “arbitrary occupation of a property intended for the domicile of others,” as it is legally referred to, can now also land someone in jail.
As for the extra staff, the new measure will see just 1,000 new guards hired at first, while the union of prison employees asked for 24,000, according to domestic press. Meanwhile, prison time for certain mostly financial crimes has been reduced or scrapped altogether.
Labelling it as “fluff,” Renzi said that “a policy that does not deal with hardship, mental health, addictions and of course prisons (themselves) is not a serious policy.”
ADVERTISEMENT“I leave Sollicciano with the images of some kids younger than my children imprinted on my heart,” Renzi added. “I know it’s not nice to have your Ferragosto disturbed by my reflections. But I think it was just and proper to be in Sollicciano today.”
Legal platform “Justicia insieme”, or Justice Together, also criticised the new law, stating that “in the face of the climate of tension mounting in penal institutions … it was legitimate to expect more courageous and, above all, immediately applicable solutions.”
String of suicides shock the nation
Meanwhile, despair in Italian prisons keeps mounting, resulting in a string of suicides across the country.
According to Italy’s Prison Ombudsman, by July, some 50 prisoners took their lives since the beginning of the year — or 16 more than during the same period in 2023 — a number contested by prison unions claiming it stands at 51 instead.
ADVERTISEMENTOut of those who committed suicide, 19 or more than one-third were awaiting trial, and 23 or nearly half were foreign nationals, an unusually high figure considering the number of all foreigners in Italy is close to 5% of the total population.
The mental health crisis has become so apparent that even Mattarella said Italian prisons were becoming “a place where all hope is lost”.
And now, the new law might mean “there will be more poor people in jail and fewer managers, who don’t go to jail anyway,” Francesco Conte, journalist and founder of Mama Termini, an association that helps Rome’s homeless, told Euronews.
“There are two main problems in general: the first one is that trials in Italy take so long,” he explained.
ADVERTISEMENT“The second is that many people who are in prison have no residency, so they can’t be under house arrest, so basically plenty of foreigners go to jail for small crimes. Meanwhile, Italians with residency, including those who committed more serious crimes, are usually under house arrest.”
“Then there’s despair due to not being helped by lawyers. That’s another big issue, many ‘free’ lawyers (assigned to the defendants) don’t do their job well. Then of course, there is abuse by fellow inmates and police,” Conte added.
Some 61,000 inmates currently reside in Italy’s prisons, while the official capacity is around 51,000, with an overcrowding rate of 130%, according to the news agency Ansa.
While the Meloni government has been intent on exporting its asylum seekers to Albania, where it is finishing up the construction of two holding facilities — another decision heavily criticised by human rights groups — those who came from abroad, including refugees, have a particularly difficult time once they find themselves on the other side of the law.
ADVERTISEMENTMost of them could hardly wait to become legal residents and equals. Yet, they only found a semblance of equality once behind bars — a heavy irony that brings on disillusionment and gloom with little hope for any silver lining.
“I know two people in jail from my work with Mama Termini. One was given four years in prison for disturbance, and he’s a very peaceful, gentle guy. When people like him get these heavy sentences for something minor, despair is easy to reach,” Conte recalled.
“Prison is not for everyone, even though some people don’t dislike it so much, mostly because they are in a bad place anyway. Another friend once said, ‘the only place where I worked legally was in prison’.”
