Traces of black soot still mark the facade of Regina Coeli prison, a reminder of the last riots in Rome’s infamous lockup – now symbolic of long-standing problems plaguing Italy’s prison system.
A steady stream of women, some with swollen eyes from crying, pass the visitors’ entrance to the crumbling building, where on a day more than 1,150 men are crammed into a facility designed for just 628 people.
A short walk from the bustling bars and restaurants of the leafy Trastevere neighborhood, Veronica Giuffrida, 31, sits on a steel bench with her toddler in her arms, awaiting the weekly visit from her incarcerated father, the child’s grandfather.
“They miss everything. The hot water doesn’t work. The electricity doesn’t work. They’re just abandoned,” she told AFP.
“It’s a jungle inside,” she said.
A guard emerges from inside for a quick break. Although he is not authorized to speak, he confirms, “Nobody who isn’t inside could ever understand it. It’s indescribable.”
– Festering, aggravation –
Regina Coeli is a teeming microcosm of the major problems plaguing Italy’s prison system today: severe, systemic overcrowding and rising suicide rates.
They have persisted for decades because previous governments – both left and right – have resorted to ad hoc measures without tackling difficult structural problems.
Similar challenges are seen elsewhere in Europe.
The Council of Europe ranked Italy sixth last year for overpopulation, behind Cyprus, Romania, France, Belgium and Hungary.
But despite far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni pledging to repair Italy’s prisons, observers say things have gotten worse.
Court delays and slow proceedings across the country are leaving too many suspects in pretrial detention, hampering early release efforts.
Inmates with mental illness or drug addictions – or both – are occupying their prisons because there is no room for the facilities to treat them.
So far this year, 77 prisoners and seven guards have committed suicide.
Foreigners represent about a third of prisoners – and half at Regina Coeli – many of whom are in precarious social circumstances that make them ineligible for house arrest.
“Today prisons are a big container where everything ends up… a kind of welfare system for society,” Gennarino De Fazio, head of the prison guards union UILPA, told AFP.
“If you don’t know how to treat someone or where, they’re going to end up in jail one way or another.”
– ‘Queen of Heaven’ –
Such is the case in Regina Coeli (“Queen of Heaven”), a former 17th-century monastery that was converted into a prison in the late 19th century.
It housed resistance heroes from the fascist era, along with countless ordinary Romans, whose wives in years past shouted at them from the Janiculum Hill above.
Although the prison is intended for short-term stays, today 20 percent of prisoners have been convicted and should be in prisons better equipped for long incarcerations.
That has contributed to an occupancy rate of more than 183 percent, the fifth worst in Italy, official data shows.
Regina Coeli has the highest number of suicides within penitentiaries: five in 2023 and three this year.
The last time was in September in the newcomer wing, where two or three men spent 23 hours a day in each cell without direct natural light.
During riots in August and September, prisoners set fire to cooking gas cylinders, tore down railings and threw tiles from the roof.
The burning prison, wrote the daily La Stampa, symbolized prisoners and guards “trapped in a powder keg, ready to explode out of anger, hatred, humiliation and abandonment.”
– System in crisis –
Regina Coeli director Claudia Clementi told a regional health hearing last month that she saw no way to reduce overcrowding.
The prison is required to have all incoming people arrested, but cannot transfer existing prisoners anywhere else; her hands were tied.
It was “not just a matter of beds,” she said.
“The whole system goes into crisis because if 1,150 people shower instead of 700-800, the heating system may stop working.”
“I honestly don’t know how this problem can be solved.”
The Ministry of Justice has rejected AFP’s request to enter Regina Coeli and interview Clementi.
When she became prime minister in October 2022, Meloni told parliament that the suicides and working conditions for guards were “unworthy of a civilized nation.”
But suicides have continued since then, while Italy’s inmate population has grown by 5,885 to 62,110 people.
Prison experts warn the situation will get worse.
Meloni’s government has created dozens of new crimes carrying prison sentences that will expand prisons even further – from attacking doctors to organizing illegal raves to “nautical” murder – while increasing penalties for existing offenses.
Critics say some measures are draconian, such as scrapping automatic deferred sentences for pregnant women and mothers with babies.
A controversial security decree passed by parliament introduces a crime of rioting in prison, with even passive resistance punishable by one to five years.
– Get out –
Justice Minister Carlo Nordio has said measures will simplify early release while improving conditions, and has promised 1,000 extra guards over the next two years.
But that won’t make up for the national deficit of 18,000, the guards union says.
Observers say easing pressure will require much stronger government reform, while the Italian Lawyers’ Association accuses the government of “twisting the entire penal system in a radically illiberal and authoritarian direction.”
Back in Regina Coeli, the region’s prison watchdog, Stefano Anastasia, said he had met young men “who have served two, three, five years of their sentence” in the cramped prison.
“Someone who has been treated like this for five years, what does he do when he gets out?” he said.
am/ar/gil
