Prisons, Antigone: Minister Carlo Nordio speaks and praises work as a fundamental part of reintegration, but then cuts funds and jobs

ROMA – Since his inauguration, the Minister of Justice Carlo Nordio has repeatedly spoken about the importance of prison work for the social reintegration of prisoners and to reduce the recidivism rate, but in practice the exact opposite is being done, cutting by 50 % of the funds available for the payment of detained persons working in prison. Thus writes Patrizio Gonnelle, president ofAntigone Association, who fights for rights and guarantees in the penal system of our country.

The explicit request to cut the number of working people. In a note from the Regional Authority of Piedmont, Liguria and Valle D’Aosta we read how the requirement identified to maintain employment rates was 2 million euros, while less than 50% of this requirement was provided by the Ministry of Justice . For this reason, the PRAP (Regional Board of Prison Administration) has invited the managements of the institutions to cut the number of working people or in any case to reduce the working hours that they carry out. These cuts may also affect specific categories of workers: those who provide assistance to other disabled or not fully self-sufficient prisoners, or those who support the pedagogical area (librarians and clerks).

Prison work is already scarce. Only around 30% of prisoners work and most of them work for the prison administration, in many cases for a few days or a few hours a week. The profit obtained serves to guarantee a return to freedom where a minimum of resources are available to cover the expenses, including those of the maintenance that each detained person must pay to the State at the end of their sentence. Making further cuts to work means leaving people without the possibility of earning money, in total boredom and apathy, in a condition that only produces further deprivation. Doing so does not help detainees to build possibilities other than crime once they are released, thus also negatively impacting safety.

Cuts that come in moments of great tension. These cuts come at a time of great tension that can be felt in prisons, where detained people see their prospects reduced to a minimum, where they see overcrowding growing, where living conditions are constantly worsening, with a number of very high suicides (already 73 this year, the second highest figure ever). “The government – ​​writes Gonnella – instead of responding to these tensions with dialogue and investments, thinks only of introducing new crimes, of prohibiting even forms of non-violent protest with draconian penalties and of building new prisons with one million euros already invested in the creation and maintenance of the office of the prison building commissioner”.