The inhuman conditions of the Turin penitentiary had been repeatedly reported, even the police union speaks of a “boiling” situation
The prison of Turin and the Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio (editing by Ansa/Shutterstock)
TiscaliNews
Two women died in one day in prison hell. Two tragedies that took place inside the Vallette walls in Turin: a woman committed suicide and another inmate let herself die slowly by refusing water, food, treatment and insistently asking for her child. The Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio, is traveling to understand what is happening in the Turin penitentiary. A cursed summer in overcrowded Italian prisons, which counted 15 suicides, to which were added those of the two female prisoners.
Broken stories
Those of the two inmates are stories of pain, like so many stories that are consumed in the cells. Susan John, a 43-year-old Nigerian, had been in Vallette since 21 July after a long period under house arrest: she had to serve a sentence (sentence ended in 2030) imposed by a court in Catania for crimes of trafficking and illegal immigration. She refused food, water, medicine, everything for 18 days. But she wasn’t supporting a hunger strike, as Cospito put forward, she let herself go day after day, perhaps out of desperation. She just kept repeating that she wanted to see her four year old son left with her father because she Susan she was married. She was confined to an area of the female section reserved for inmates with mental health problems and behavior problems. Around 3 o’clock last night her heart stopped beating. The intervention of the prison police and medical personnel was useless. The prisoner who also killed herself in Vallette was 28 years old. She had been taken to the Turin prison from Genoa Pontedecimo.
Inhuman conditions
To the guarantor of the rights of prisoners in Turin, Monica Chiara Gallo, the case was never reported: “We would have activated our procedures to try something”. Through President Igor Boni, the Radicals speak of the “tip of the iceberg of a rotten system”, while Riccardo Magi, secretary of Più Europa, speaks of a “shocking affair” and announces a question to Minister Nordio. “This – says Senator Ilaria Cucchi – is a tragedy that cannot be tolerated in a country that professes to be civil and democratic”. Overcrowding and, in the summer, the heat, explains Antigone, make the situation of prisoners even more dramatic “it is no coincidence that, during the summer months, the number of suicides rises”, observes the association which recalls how 10,000 are held in Italian prisons more people than available places with an overcrowding rate of 121%.
“Prisons that have been boiling for months”
The unions are worried: Sappe says that the two deaths in a few hours in the Turin prison “require Justice Minister Carlo Nordio to make a clear change of pace on the country’s prison policies”. “It is necessary – says the secretary general, Donato Capece – to envisage a new custodial model. Prisons have been boiling for months”. For Leo Beneduci, secretary general of Osapp, “in the face of an emergency that appears incurable, we can only reiterate the extreme urgency of providing for a commissioner of the Italian penitentiary system”.