from L’Unità, 27 March 2024
It was known that he suffered from schizophrenia, it was known that he was incompatible with prison. But the Italian state is only interested in one thing: locking marginalized, misfits and troublemakers in cells. A 31-year-old boy killed himself by hanging himself in a cell in the Le Vallette prison in Turin. He was alone in the cell. He was schizophrenic. The prosecutor had long requested that he be released from prison and transferred to a suitable facility. The investigating judge had given the green light. But Fabrizio Alvaro Nunez was not transferred because a place could not be found. They told him: wait, get in line. He didn’t wait and instead of getting in line he hung himself from the window grate with a sheet around his neck.
The Prosecutor’s Office has started an investigation assuming the crime of incitement to suicide. Are you sure we should be talking about suicide? If I take a schizophrenic boy, who already attempted suicide 10 years ago, I lock him in a cell, alone, knowing that the psychiatrists have said that he is incompatible with prison, do I know or not that he can kill himself? No, it’s not suicide. It’s state murder. There have already been 27 state murders in Italian prisons since January 1st.
A 31-year-old boy committed suicide in the Vallette prison in Turin. He hanged himself with a sheet. It is suicide number 27 since the beginning of the year. 10 per month. If someone doesn’t intervene, at the end of the year we will well exceed one hundred. Massacre. He doesn’t give a damn to anyone: every now and then a few nice words from the authorities, then nothing. Only decrees and decrees to increase the number of prisoners and years of prison. This boy was called Fabrizio Alvaro Nunez, he was Latin American and he was schizophrenic. Severe schizophrenia was not a private matter, it was established, the authorities, the magistrates, the jailers knew it. He had already tried to kill himself once, 10 years ago. This time the prosecutor had asked that he be transferred to a supervised psychiatric facility, the investigating judge had said yes. So? There is no place in Piedmont, they put his name in the queue. As soon as a place became available they would take him. He didn’t free himself in time and Fabrizio, who was alone in the cell – he was alone in the cell – took the sheet from his cot, tore it with his hands, cut it into strips, knotted the strips, tied a knot loophole and fixed the noose to the grate of the wolf’s mouth. Up. Then he climbed onto a stool, put his neck in the noose and kicked the stool away. A nurse noticed it, we don’t know how many minutes later. He took him down and began resuscitation maneuvers. Five minutes, ten, twenty. Cardiac massage. Then the ambulance arrived. There was a doctor. He only said two words: he is dead.
Fabrizio had been in prison a few years ago, for twelve months, because he had attacked his mother. The father today says that he was only a pusher. He who knows. He had attacked her during a schizophrenic crisis. He often lost his mind. Typically he noticed it a little before the crisis exploded. The father – Edmundo, 63 years old, desperate – says that he almost always had time to warn them. He said: “Dad, I’m sick…”. And his parents knew what to do: a shot of a medicine that was always ready. Generally it worked. Then last summer it happened that a crisis arrived without warning. Edmundo, the father, was sleeping, and Fabrizio jumped on him and hit him with a knife. He hurt him. He struggled and called for help. Fabrizio was taken away by the police and put in prison. The father today says that he asked in every way that he be released from prison. He speaks of Fabrizio as a very good boy, who he loved and by whom he was loved. He says that in recent years he has asked the state for help a hundred times. Silence, bureaucracy, postponements.
On Sunday Edmundo spoke to his son on the phone. They talked to each other. The last time. He called him papi, he reassured him a little, he told him that he was fine, he asked him for help a little, because he couldn’t take it anymore. But the attitude of the State, and of a large part of public opinion, towards prisoners is always the same. These people can’t expect too many rights: they have committed crimes. Paghino. Nobody cares if someone is schizophrenic. They tell you: “get in line, it’s not just you.” After all, what is a prisoner? A number, an abstract entity, a culprit, or in any case a suspect. There is no need to recognize his rights. Rights can be recognized for good citizens, not for those who have violated the laws.
“Did you make a mistake? And what do you want now?” – The Turin Prosecutor’s Office has started proceedings against unknown persons and the alleged crime is induction to suicide. In some cases the Prosecutor’s Office is quite lenient, especially when it imagines that magistrates might end up involved. Why talk about incitement or induction to suicide? This is murder. Got it: o-my-god. And the culprit is well identified, without the need for too many investigations, and he is not a natural person: it is the State.
It is the State that uses prisons as a place to incarcerate the desperate, the marginalized, the outcasts, as Susanna Marietti, from Antigone, wrote very well a few days ago in a splendid article in this newspaper. Even more so the dangerous freaks. It is the State that forces them into unbearable conditions: try to imagine yourself for a week, a month, a year, ten years, closed in a room, with bars, or alone or with too many companions in a few square meters, without a thread of freedom without being able to work, without affection, without relationships… try it, tell me: wouldn’t you go crazy? Could you resist without tranquilizers, medicines, drugs, drugs? Not me, if I just think about prison my hands and knees shake. I really can’t understand how it is possible that the majority of Italians believe that prison is something compatible with modernity and with a modicum of morality. Yes: morality, let me use this word for once. Prison is a great moral issue.
See the case of Fabrizio. There was no place for him in a suitable facility. And why? Because we invest in a prison, in repression, we solve everything with prisons, we don’t invest a single euro to organize structures and train suitable personnel to deal with mental distress, marginalization, extreme poverty, drug addiction or even madness. The State doesn’t care about all this. He solves the problem with a pair of handcuffs and the bars and armored doors of the cells. For this the State is guilty.
Who is the State? Its apparatus, its officials, the political parties that, in turn, govern it. When you hear “against overcrowding let’s build new prisons”, know that that is an incitement to suicide. Yes, that one. Prisons should not be established: they should be razed to the ground. Assistance needed. We need structures. We need staff for re-education. Not bars. The “certainty of punishment” is a horrendous phrase, which everyone repeats and makes themselves look good. Too often the certainty of punishment is the certainty of death. And those are not suicides. Stop saying: suicides. They are murders.