ROME (Reuters) - The Italian parliament has approved a law to improve conditions in the country's overcrowded prisons amid a spike in suicides among inmates.
Chronic overcrowding and understaffing have combined with stifling summer heat to create prison conditions in which 65 inmates have taken their own lives so far this year, with the most recent suicide on Wednesday, compared with 70 in the whole of 2023.
Italy is not the only European Union country with a prison problem. With economies weak and budgets tight, penal systems often struggle for funding even as more and more people find themselves incarcerated.
Jails in France, Greece, Romania and Cyprus all have more inmates than their official capacity, Eurostat data shows.
The Italian government's decree hires more prison personnel, allows inmates to make more phone calls, simplifies procedures for them to obtain early release and boosts community care facilities once they are outside.
It was passed in the Chamber of Deputies by 153 votes to 89 late on Wednesday. Justice Minister Carlo Nordio told reporters the aim of the legislation was "what we could call prison humanisation".
Patrizio Gonnella, president of the prisoners' welfare organisation Antigone, said the legislation was "minimalist" and did far too little to address the key problem of overcrowding.
Italy's prisons housed about 61,000 inmates at the end of June, some 10,000 more than the official capacity, according to data from Antigone. At the same time there is a consistent shortfall of almost 7,000, or 16%, in the prescribed workforce of guards, exacerbated in the summer due to staff holidays.
The problems have been compounded by a heatwave which has seen temperatures of 35 degrees Celsius (95°F) in many Italian cities in recent weeks, leading to a spate of prison protests.
"We haven't seen tensions like this since the COVID-19 epidemic," said Claudia Clementi, director of Rome's Regina Coeli jail which has housed over 1,100 prisoners since 2023 against a capacity of 628 and, like many other Italian jails, has no air conditioning.