by
Stefania Tallei

In Italy

The detained population in Italy has been noticeably increasing during these last years. The overcrowding, scant possibility to work during imprisonment and a long wait for trial are among the more apparent problems of the actual Italian prison situation. The greater part of the inmates is comprised of drug addicts and immigrants. In Rome, for example, about one third of the inmates are addicts and one-third foreigners. This is a trend that is spreading throughout the nation. The crimes of which they have been accused or condemned usually enter into the so-called "micro-crimes."

Poverty itself is the cause of a prolonged time of detention, worsening the conditions of exclusion from the social and labour contexts. Social inequality further impedes those who have not a home, or lack external support, to be able to apply for alternative measures of detention.

For relatively small crimes that involve two or three years of detention, one could expect alternative measures, outside of prison walls, like "semi-freedom" or entrustment to probation services. But access to these benefits is impeded by many attendant factors, such as economic, social and cultural deprivation or personal situations of disadvantage.

These persons lack the necessary requirements to obtain alternative measures. It is therefore difficult, often impossible, that a judge allow them when there is no one on the outside who offers guarantees and when there is frequently not even a place for them to live. This is true not only for those who have definitively been condemned, but also for those who are in prison awaiting trial.