The riots that broke out yesterday at the Beccaria juvenile detention center in Milan, which suffered extensive damage, subsided in the early hours of this morning. The inmates set fire to various rooms and allegedly attempted a mass escape by reaching the porter’s lodge, the last point of entry to the outside of the penitentiary. In addition to the police, the fire brigade and several ambulances are on site. This was reported by the Uilpa Penitentiary Police.
The toll is of some minor injuries, including among the agents, and of an inmate hospitalized and guarded by the State Police, in the absence of prison officers. “The guarding will be taken over at 8 by the Penitentiary Police, with agents who worked until past 5, after less than three hours of rest”, underlines Gennarino De Fazio, general secretary of the Uilpa Penitentiary Police. “During the disturbances, in which all 58 inmates present took part, several attempted to escape and four managed to climb over the perimeter wall, but after hours of searching they were all found within the perimeter that delimits the prison and other offices of the Department for Juvenile and Community Justice”.
The inmates set fire to various rooms and attempted a mass escape – the union reports – reaching the porter’s lodge, the last point of entry to the outside of the penitentiary. Off-duty prison police officers also had to intervene to contain the disturbances.
The “Beccaria” juvenile detention center has been at the center, in recent months, of an investigation by the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office that led to the arrest of 13 officers for alleged violence and torture. “What happened again in Milan, preceded by similar events at the Beccaria as well as at the Ferrante Aporti in Turin and in many other juvenile detention centers in the country, is the clear proof of the organizational and management failure of the juvenile penal system, which is on a par with that for adults”, accuses the unionist. “A change of pace is urgently needed that must be dictated by politics, even before the administrations. The system must be made safe by strengthening the facilities starting with the Penitentiary Police staff, which is missing more than 18 thousand units, implementing and making the structures more efficient and reorganizing the entire apparatus. It would also be a good idea to rethink the choice to keep detainees up to 25 years of age in juvenile detention centers. We hope that the Ministry of Justice and the Government will make their voices heard this morning with concrete arguments and, above all, that tangible and immediate measures will be adopted. However, we fear that we will have to listen again to the usual off-key refrains with resounding announcements empty of content”.
“Episodes of this kind, which are now occurring more and more frequently, are proof that the State has failed and the prison system is increasingly abandoned to itself.” These are the words of the secretary of the Penitentiary Police Union (SPP), Aldo Di Giacomo.
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