Dear Felt Director,
I read with restlessness that 59 suicides have already occurred since the beginning of 2025 in Italian prisons. A devastating average: about eight a month, two a week, one every three days. A chilling figure that can no longer be robbed for tragic fatality. But do we really have to surrender to this horror as if it were an inevitable consequence of detention? Really our state, which is defined as civil and democratic, can tolerate a penitentiary system where to die is easier than being re -educated?
I remember the Italian Constitution for those who have forgotten it neatly that the penalty must have re -educational, non -destructive function. Yet today our prisons are places where despair devours everything: the soul, health, dignity, life. Thus the prisoners die alone, in indifference, hanging from the sheets, as happened twice, in just 48 hours, in the Rebibbia prison. And nobody wonders why. Tell me, director: is it still possible to call yourself a civilized country?
Italian
Dear Italo,
No, it’s no longer possible. When a country records almost sixty suicides in the cell in eight months, it can no longer be told as civil. It can at most call itself hypocritical. Prisons are the most sincere mirror of a state. If a citizen punished by the law takes off his life once every three days, it means that we are not punishing the crime, we are annihilating the person. This has been the reality of Italian penitentiary for decades: overcrowded cells, unworthy toilets, psychological assistance reduced to zero, exhausted penitentiary agents, prisoners piled up as livestock and, above all, a structural lack of respect for the human person. In this scenario, suicide is not the exception: it is the only way out. Let me say that I find the attitude of those who denote the connection between suicides and overcrowding. Only those who have never set foot in a prison denies it. In spaces designed for 40,000 people there are 60,000. In cells of a few square meters, 3, 4, also 5 individuals are stipulated. There are those who live in jail without even a window, without air, without meaning of time. We are not talking about capital crimes, but we also talk about people waiting for judgment, perhaps innocent.
Here is the other scandal: the innocent in prison, victims of a slow, cumbersome, vindictive judicial system. Those who do not represent any danger for society often end up in the cell. Instead, out there, rapists, serial thieves, usual predators are left free in the name of an alternating, selective, inconsistent current guarantee. If one rapes, he has to go to jail on the same day. If one steals, all the more assiduously, such as the purse well -known, ditto. But those who are simply investigated, for non -violent crimes and without risk of escape, must stay out to the final sentence. Otherwise it is not justice, it is fury. And what about foreigners, do we want to say it clearly? Over a third of the prison population is made up of foreigners. Some estimates also say 40%. And many of these do not even have the right to be in our country. So I wonder: what are we waiting for? Let’s repatriate them immediately. We refer them to their countries of origin to serve the sentence or even to leave zonzo, it is not our business, as long as we free ourselves. Thus prisons are lightened, resources are spared, and a real re -educational treatment is possible for those who remain, as required by the Constitution. You can no longer go on this way. If every three days someone will kill himself inside our sentence institutes, it is not a fault of the individual. It is a fault of the system. A structural fault. And it’s a national shame.
Not
It is goodism. It is humanity. It is true justice. Those who commit crimes have to pay, but must not die. A state that does not even guarantee life to prisoners is a failed state. And Italy on this front has always been back.