“The harsh treatment of the prison police must end. We do not accept indeterminate preventive detention or suspension of service before the first trial.” This is the message that Aldo Di Giacomo, general secretary of the Prison Police Union, transmitted yesterday in front of the Beccaria juvenile prison, supported by colleagues and relatives of the officers of the penitentiary institute in via Calchi Taeggi, who were arrested last April for an investigation into alleged violence and acts of torture against inmates. Among those arrested, there were 13 members of the prison police and another 8 who were suspended from duty.
“We feel a sense of rejection from the State, we are disappointed,” Di Giacomo continues, “every time an accident happens, the prison agency is never held responsible, only the police officer,” in a period where “the conditions of prisons, especially those for minors, are serious.” Following the “storm,” “at Beccaria nothing has changed, on the contrary, there have been further riots and escapes.” And the prison police “is once again the most penalized, with the change of chief. In reality, we should rally around the prison system with concrete actions.”
Di Giacomo then highlighted the challenges of the work environment: “We are forced to work shifts that are too demanding. Those who interact with prisoners work at least 40 extra hours a month. Differentiated paths are not set up, depending on age and type of crime, with re-education that is adequate for each boy. 44 new officers have been sent to Beccaria, but we would need 70 more, just as we would need more psychologists and educators”.
On the street, among the relatives of the detained officers, the figures of Isabella (formerly a prison police officer in Beccaria) and Salvatore, whose thirty-year-old son was released to house arrest, emerged. Salvatore expresses frustration with the “bad apples” label attributed to the officers, including his son who wakes up early at 5 in the morning and has always shown respect, but who now finds himself in this uncertain situation. “But he will get out of it,” he says confidently.
