Country

Italy

Detention issue

Healthcare

FRA research findings

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Legal instruments & key provisions

Legal instrument Key provision
Law No. 354/1975 (Legge 26 luglio 1975, n. 354, Norme sull’ordinamento penitenziario e sulla esecuzione delle misure privative e limitative della libertà)Each prison has to be provided with a medical and pharmaceutical service, as well as with a psychiatric specialist professional. In case specialist care is needed (which cannot be provided by the prison medical staff), prisoners have the right to be transferred to civil hospitals or other external medical facilities with the prior authorisation of the competent court.

NATIONAL PREVENTIVE MECHANISM RECOMMENDATIONS

Year Recommendation Report
2017The NPM stressed some crucial concerns about detention conditions of people whose psychic impairments emerge during the detention period: these people are usually detained in specific areas of the detention facilities or in specific facilities where they can be adequately treated and assisted. According to the NPM's monitoring activity, some prisons are not endowed with the facilities under examination and prisoners are detained in solitary confinement or in ordinary detention areas. Moreover, the authority reported that the ‘empty cell’ practice is still an appalling reality in some prisons. Finally, the authority pointed out that, in two of the monitored prisons, physical restraint was used to control prisoners with psychiatric impairments. Report details
2018The NPM reported the situation of prisoners detained in 'protected medical sections' (Reparti di medicina protetta), that is sections existing in some jails providing healthcare assistance to those detainees who need specialised assistance. According to the NPM, detention conditions of prisoners in these sections – often located in neglected areas of the prison – are critical, entailing isolation, no access to socialisation areas or to outdoor spaces, no possibility to go out of their rooms or communicate with other prisoners. There is no phone to call their relatives or the lawyer and the rooms’ windows are often sealed. For these reasons – and also to improve the difficult working conditions of the police staff operating in these sections – the NPM recommends the complete reform of these sections in all the prisons where they have been created. Report details
2019The Italian NPM recommended Italian authorities the necessity “to guarantee privacy during medical examinations and the interviews between the physician and the patients, ensuring that distance control is normally adopted by penitentiary police, whose presence in the room may be requested by the healthcare staff involved in specific and substantiated cases and can never become an ordinary routine”. As reported by the report itself, this recommendation did not have an outcome in practice. Report details