Some of the articles that we have read on “suicide in prisons” and that we decide to propose are, in our opinion, very distant from a vision that we would like to be careful and pragmatic, such as that of Pietro Pellegrini’s contribution. It is a fact that prisons are places of suffering and, even more so, of suffering when used as places of accumulation of waste. It would be enough to reflect, not so much on the number of prisoner suicides, but on the possibility of suicide affecting prison operators, especially prison guards. The suicide rate of the detained population is much, much higher (up to ten times) than that of the free population. And, even more worryingly, the suicide rate of prison guards is three times higher than that of the general population. A reflection on these numbers would be enough to realize that the problem should be addressed in a completely different way.
The Mental Health Forum has always insisted and will continue to do so, that the care of people with mental disorders who have committed crimes (even when already declared mentally ill) must always and with extreme promptness refer to mental health services, which we imagine as direction and coordination in projects that are always possible, we repeat always possible, of care, rehabilitation and reintegration towards the possibility of a dignified life as for everyone. Continuing to think about the solution to this problem by increasing the number of Rems and beds and profiling figures of lesser or greater danger, and consequently places of lesser or greater security, can only reproduce the structure of institutional rigidity, of lack of communication among the different and precious professionals involved, push towards a sort of deadly “passing the buck” and deresponsibility and distancing of all those people who, by choice or necessity, find themselves operating in this field.
The four articles that we will publish are only intended as an invitation to reflect on what we need to do to be able to bring our attention back “to the inconvenient brothers” who ask for nothing other than our “understanding”, in the awareness of a fair execution of the sentence and of a vision that is extremely responsible towards the community it welcomes. Every criminal act can only find a place in the biography and social history of the person who committed that crime. The task of the institutions we imagine is to continually bring citizens, people and subjects back into the concreteness and harshness of everyday life.
We suggest rereading the Forum’s editorial on the position we have taken on the matter and the bill which aims to open a campaign – law 180 common good – which takes the first steps, certain of the militant adhesion of all the friends of the Forums.