An appeal for the prisons from the penitentiary police

The Italian prisons have an historic record of prisoners (about 69.000): a new allarm from the General Secretariat of the SAPPE, the independent trade union of the Penitentiary Police, which is from a long time engaged to let public opinion know about the real situation that the agents have to cope with every day.
The overcoming of the prescribed capacity – the one which permits a prison to work properly and observing the Constitution – is actually a problem even for the Penitentiary Police, who is lacking in staff in about more than 6.000 units.
Last September 22nd in a press conference in Potenza, the General Secretary of the SAPPE, Donato Capece, accused the politicians, “who have showed their interest in for prison issues just in Ferragosto (Italian summer bank holiday), but have not done anything tangible”. And went on, telling to have “assisted to the same old denunciations of an unbearable situation for the prisoners and some parliamentary question, but if this is the only result of an involvement which has received a lot of visibility from the media, so it would have been better to avoid that celebrity show, which has generated many hopes and took advantage of the Penitentiary Police work. The agents had to work overtime and they will not be payed for it”.
Therefore, a new appeal to the politicians, so that they give a concrete answer to an unbearable situation. And they have to do it as soon as possible, because “if this sector is breaking up, as datas demonstrate, it means that any measure will be felt in prison only after some months”.
Silvia Onnis
Translation: Veronica Atzei