European Human Rights Court Fines Italy For Overcrowded Prisons
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The European Court of Human Rights has given Italy one year to reduce overcrowding in its prisons, reported the Associated Press, after the government failed to pass legislation designed to improve living conditions, despite recognising the problem in 2010.
The European Court of Human Rights has given Italy one year to reduce overcrowding in its prisons, reported the Associated Press, after the government failed to pass legislation designed to improve living conditions, despite recognising the problem in 2010.
The Strasbourg-based court found that inmate conditions in numerous Italian prisons did indeed violate the European Convention on Human Rights’ prohibition against torture and human or degrading treatment; and fined the government 100,000 euros ($131,000) for its inaction to resolve the problem.
“The shortage of space to which the applicants had been subjected had been exacerbated by other conditions such as the lack of hot water over long periods, and inadequate lighting and ventilation in Piacenza prison,” said a court statement.
[quote]“All these shortcomings, although not in themselves inhuman and degrading, amounted to additional suffering.”[/quote]According to AP, the case was brought forward to the court after seven inmates, in two separate prisons, had complained that they were being forced to share a 9 square-metre with two other people, giving each inmate just 3 square meters of personal space.
Although the Italian government then declared a state of emergency for its overcrowded prisons in 2010, legislation, however, failed to pass in the Senate – prompting action from the continent’s human rights watchdog.
Italian Justice Minister Paola Severino, said she was “deeply humiliated” but not surprised by the Strasbourg court’s decision. Criticising politicians for having “campaigned on the skin of inmates”, Severino promised that she would work hard to ensure that Italian prison conditions “are worthy of a civilized country.”
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The Italian prison rights group Antigone also estimated that Italian prisons are currently at 142 percent capacity, with some individual prisons at over 268 percent capacity. A call to create an additional 47 prison annexes, to boost capacity by more than 20,000 inmates, was shot down in parliament last year, with President Giorgio Napolitano admitting that the Strasbourg court’s decision was now a “mortifying confirmation” of Italy’s inability to guarantee its prisoners their most basic rights.
There are now several hundred complaints of Italian prison overcrowding currently before the EU court. The Strasbourg-based court however did not indicate what sort of punishment would be levelled on the Italian government if it failed to address the issue.
Watch Documentary On Italian Prison Conditions:
