Prison overcrowding and prisoners health: the Italian penitentiary system at the time of the pandemic.

The Covid-19 pandemic, which has hit Italy as first among European countries, has caused fear of dramatic consequences for the Italian prison population, due to the impossibility to guarantee compliance with the minimum distancing recommended by the health authorities inside prisons which have one of the highest occupancy rates in Europe. Despite the declaration of a state of emergency in prisons ten years ago and the consequent use of a series of deflationary measures, a new increase in the number of prisoners, many of them foreigners, had been recorded in the five years preceding 2020. The crisis of the penitentiary system therefore had not been tackled by rethinking criminal policies, especially those on drug and irregular immigration, but simply by introducing mechanisms for the decongestion of prisons without a large-scale intervention. Only thanks to the recent legislative measures adopted in the context of the Covid-19 emergency, the number of prisoners had started to decrease from March to July 2020, except then resuming its growth. However, a wave of riots broke out in numerous Italian prisons in March, as a protest against the suspension imposed on the talks with relatives, causing the death of some inmates and allowing the escape of others. The present contribution aims to analyse the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Italian prisons, reflecting on the current social and political state of the penitentiary system, with particular reference to the contradictions of the criminal policies adopted over time and to the social and health conditions of the prison population.