Prisons, young lawyers ask for visits to Palm Sunday prisons

The newborn ” Aiga National Observatory on Prisons’, set up to turn on the spotlight at a time like the present one, close to the entry into force of important reforms, on the condition of Italian prisons, asks, as the first official ‘stage’ of this new path, on Palm Sunday, to be able to visit the Italian penitentiary institutions through the territorial delegations of the Observatory, to verify the conditions of the prisons, to hear from the inmates’ hands-on respect for their fundamental rights, the validity of social reintegration practiced today and, upon completion, to draw up a summary document of the activities carried out. For about two months, underlines the President of the Italian Association of Young Lawyers, Francesco Paolo Perchinunno, “Aiga has set up an ad hoc Department on the Penitentiary System, which focuses its attention on inmates and on the problems concerning Italian prisons. . Only a few days ago the European Court of Human Rights again condemned Italy for the violation of art. 3 of the European Convention which prohibits inhuman and degrading treatment. These figures cannot fail to touch everyone’s sensibilities the truly intolerable rate of suicides in prisons, which is over ten times that found in the general population and the number, equal to almost 40% of the prison population, of drug addicted prisoners “. “The gruesome images of the episodes that occurred in the prison of Santa Maria Capua Vetere and in that of Foggia have remained in everyone’s memory – continues Perchinunno – which, unfortunately, seem to represent the thermometer of a situation now out of control”. Precisely to give further impetus to the initiatives in which it is engaged, on the proposal of the department on the Penitentiary, the national council Aiga, last February 18, intended to establish this new body. Aiga, for over 50 years established nationally with about 10 thousand young lawyers registered and 136 territorial sections, in addition to the countless forensic, training and sociocultural policy activities that are carried out every day, has always shown sensitivity and attention to the numerous problems that afflict the penal system and the conditions that prisoners are currently forced to endure.