"In Bancali the conditions of the prison are disastrous , and in the silence of the institutions". Thus the regional Guarantor for prisoners , Irene Testa , who carried out an inspection this morning in the Sassari prison.
«When you enter the section called "reception" and intended for new arrivals, but where in reality psychiatric prisoners are mainly allocated and as soon as you cross the gate you smell a bad smell and notice a sandwich in the corridor, you understand that there is no sandwich inside chocolate but excrement. And you immediately understand that what you are about to see is the unimaginable," he specified.
In Bancali "there are 17 prisoners in antidepressant therapy, 66 in anxiolytic therapy, 55 in neuroantidepressant therapy, 10 in phial therapy and 18 drug addicts in substitution therapy - explains Testa -. And many others without full-blown pathology but with disturbing traits ».
A difficult situation to manage for managers and staff, a real emergency.
They range from the "prisoner who claims to have discovered the pyramids but nobody believes him in prison" to the "self-harming prisoner who shows me the marks in his arms and completely sliced chest". And then again «another who doesn't know what happened to the dog after his arrest and asks me to call his father to retrieve the dog from the kennel. The cells are full of subjects with borderline and bipolar personalities. And a thought goes today to the staff, to the director, to those who work in these conditions».
«The indifference of institutions at all levels is angry - continues the guarantor - which guarantee neither the right to health of those who are serving a sentence nor decent working conditions for personnel forced to manage extreme, difficult, sometimes impossible conditions. The Government, the Minister of Justice must urgently address the problem of psychiatric patients in prison. Filter structures that are not prisons must be identified. It serves no purpose or anyone to keep these sick people in cells. Dedicated care and facilities are needed ».
Last point but certainly not "less serious - ends Testa - is the question of 41 bis. In Sassari there are 92 prisoners in 41 bis and serious reasoning will need to be made on the number of presences. One cannot have the expectation that Sardinia becomes the place to unload all the problems of the peninsula».
(Unioneonline/vl)