Night of revolt in Beccaria prison: attempted escape and injuries among inmates and officers

After a night of “ordinary madness”, I am the riots have subsided ongoing since yesterday evening at the juvenile penal institute ‘Cesare Beccaria in Milan’. The damage to the structure was considerable. The riot that occurred was promptly put down and there was no attempt by the prisoners to escape, the Department for Juvenile and Community Justice clarified, thus denying some news leaked this morning to the media regarding the escape attempt that was allegedly carried out by the inmates.

“The rioting actions caused significant damage to the first group but the intervention of the penitentiary police personnel allowed order to be restored immediately, while three inmates were found and returned to their cells while they were hidden within the walled perimeter of the prison”, he concludes.

“During the riots, 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 tracked down within the perimeter that delimits the prison and other offices of the Department for Juvenile and Community Justice”, Gennarino De Fazio, general secretary of the Uilpa penitentiary police, had reported.

“Thanks to the extraordinary work of the women and men of the penitentiary police who were present and who intervened off duty, there were no irreparable consequences, but some minor injuries were reported, both among the inmates and among the officersa prisoner was admitted to hospital and is currently being guarded by the state police due to a lack of prison staff”.

“What happened again in Milan, preceded by similar events at Beccaria as well as at the ‘Ferrante Aporti’ in Turin and in many other institutions for minors in the country, is the clear proof of the organizational and managerial failure of the juvenile penal system, which is on a par with that for adults – underlines the secretary of Uilpa Pp – 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 over 18 thousand units, implementing and making the structures more efficient and reorganizing the entire apparatus – adds De Fazio – It would also be a good idea to rethink the decision to keep detainees up to 25 years of age in juvenile penal institutions. 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 enacted. However, we fear that we will once again have to listen to the same old out-of-tune refrains with resounding announcements empty of content”.

Prisons: Juvenile Justice Department, ‘no escape of prisoners’