To improve the protection of detainees' rights, Italy should adopt "minimum" standards of detention but rather "elementary" standards, according to "Norms and Normality," a new booklet containing a set of standards for the incarceration of adults in Italy.

It was presented on 29 January during a press conference held by Mauro Palma, Italy's national guarantor of the rights of persons detained or deprived of personal liberty.

A living document

As Palma underlined, "Norms and Normality" is a work in progress. At present, it contains in one volume all the recommendations included in the reports written during the previous two years' worth of visits to the 59 penitentiary institutions for adults in Italy. As the guarantor carries out more visits, more recommendations will be added to the document.

The places of deprivation of personal liberty that fall under the supervision of the guarantor, despite having common characteristics, are very different from each other. For this reason, the standards collected in this volume refer to the specific reality of penitentiary institutions for adults. More publications on the standards related to other places of detention will be soon issued by the office of the Guarantor.

Checklist

When visiting any penitentiary institution, the guarantor uses a checklist that includes all thematic areas subject to monitoring, in order to detect any shortcoming.

The standards contained in "Norms and Normality" are the same as the thematic areas monitored by the checklist, namely: material and hygienic conditions of detention facilities; equipment and use of common areas; sections and special rooms; sections for the special regime 41-bis; quality of life in detention; management of critical events; prevention and management of radicalisation; penitentiary regime; human rights protection; right to health; registers; and personnel.

Elementary standards

An important aspect that was underlined during the press conference is that recommendations are acts of soft law, meaning they don’t bind the administrations to which they are addressed; however, they represent an important tool to improve detention conditions. This is also why the standards contained in the volume are defined as "elementary" rather than "minimum" standards.

While minimum standards are thresholds below which detainees’ rights are at risk of violation, elementary standards are higher thresholds that aim at a progressive improvement of prison conditions.

Critical issues

One of the problems highlighted during the press conference and defined in "Norms and Normality" as "one of the most critical points of prison life" is the issue of transfers. In particular, the problem concerns transfers of detainees to institutions that are located far from their family or area of residence. For this reason, the guarantor recommended that penitentiary authorities set up a roundtable in order create clear guidelines and criteria for the transfer of prisoners.

Solitary confinement is another critical issue highlighted in Palma's list of recommendations, and one area in which Liberties member Antigone has proposed reform. The problems identified by the guarantor include the overlapping of solitary confinement as a disciplinary sanction with regimes such as the one prescribed by 41-bis of the Italian penitentiary law, the overlapping of regime 41-bis with solitary confinement as part of sentence prescribed by article 72 of the penal code, and the application of several disciplinary sanctions of solitary confinement that can result in a prolonged isolation of the inmate. The recommendations aim to avoid these situations, which constitute a violation of detainees’ rights.