Juvenile prisons, Antigone’s dossier: never have so many children in prisons, in one year admissions increased by 16.4%

ROMA – Until 22 days ago – says a dossier from Antigone – there were 569 boys and girls detained in Italian penal institutions for minors (Ipm). And the figure has now exceeded 500 presences for eight months, fluctuating between 560 and 580 in recent months. Such high levels had never been recorded before. In October two years ago, when the Meloni government took office, juvenile prisons housed 392 people, entirely in line with the figure immediately before the pandemic. These are the salient data of Antigone’s dossier on the emergency in the IPM, one year after the Caivano decree (later law), adopted by the Government in the face of the urgency of curbing juvenile crime, which brought significant changes to the discipline, both in re-educational and punitive terms.

A surge that has no equal. In 22 months, the number of young prisoners has increased by 48% – we read in the dossier: a surge that has no equal and which has no basis in a parallel increase in juvenile crime, which in the last 15 years has had a fluctuating trend without, however, particular peaks and which in 2023 even saw the number of reports of minors reported or arrested decrease by 4.15% compared to the previous year. A surge, however, which is not evenly distributed over the months considered: if in the 11 months from October 2022 to September 2023, when the so-called Caivano Decree came into force, attendance at Ipm increased by 59 units, in the following 11 months the increase was 129, or more than double.

Falsified numbers. And, furthermore, it is a number that is absolutely distorted downwards, according to Antigone: There would be much more kids in IPM today if it weren’t for that the Caivano Decree allowed the transfer to the adult system of many children who, having committed the crime as minors, had reached the age of majority. In addition to the static data, the growth in IPM presences is illustrated by the number of entries recorded since the beginning of the year. As of September 15, 2024, there were 889 admissions. In the same period of 2023, there were 764 admissions. In just one year, a growth of 16.4% was recorded. The comparison with past years makes the volume of growth even more evident.

“We have never seen anything like it” This is the comment of the activists of Antigone. “Despite our long experience in monitoring Italian prisons, it is the first time that we have found a juvenile system so full of problems and full of clouds. Our concern grows day by day. We can’t imagine how this story will end.” For this reason the Association asks politicians, administration and public opinion not to look the other way: “Minors continue to be locked in prison without any educational project, without any reception plan, without any possibility of reintegration social”.

That listening to the kids that no one dedicates themselves to. Antigone he also asks to listen to the young people who have protested within the IPM in recent months: “We need to listen to what the detained young people have to say and ask of us – we read in the dossier -. Nobody did it. No one entered the prison to have a meeting with them, an assembly, to hear their reasons. It is increasingly clear that we are riding the wave of protests – which will soon, under the inappropriate name of revolts, be punished with sentences of up to eight years in prison even in their form of passive resistance – to justify a model of ever-increasing juvenile imprisonment more similar to that of adults: closed, overcrowded, violent.

Juvenile and adult prisons: no difference. And instead – the dossier points out – the strength of the Italian juvenile justice system, which all of Europe has envied us, has in the past been in its ability to differentiate itself from adult prisons and to propose an educational and not exclusively repressive approach. Today, those for whom Italy has no place elsewhere go to IPM. Not the perpetrators of the most serious crimes (the highest percentage are in fact crimes against property, especially in the case of foreign children), but the most marginal ones, starting with unaccompanied foreign minors. And the mandate entrusted to juvenile prisons is that of neutralization. Don’t reintegrate them into society – is the implicit message – we don’t want them out here: keep them yourselves. Bury them under liters of psychotropic drugs and piles of more years in prison.”