President

is recommended according to the guidelines indicated by the European bodies.
The plan should foresee recommendations for:
- the development of monitoring and research on suicide and acts of
self-harming for a better understanding of the phenomenon;
- normative guidelines for the introduction of the mainstream non-prison
punishment, lacking until now – except for the modest mention of a mere fine
and some measures given by special judges – in the Italian legal system. This
is to be hoped for in consideration of the specific conditions of the serious
social hardship of today’s prison population, with the high number of foreigners
and drug addicts;
- greater transparency of the internal rules, overcoming the institutional
opacity that makes suffering in prison unacceptable, insofar as being
indecipherable. For this aim the general ‘de-responsibilising’ and ‘infantilising’
attitude towards prisoners must be stopped along with the use of particularly
risky practices such as the recourse to isolation.
- an immediate plan of action to decrease the detainees in the JPHs
according to the indications foreseen by the passage of prison healthcare to the
NHS
- the organisation of specific training for personnel in suicide prevention,
starting with individual cases
- the development of the personalisation of treatment, guaranteeing the
actual presence of specialists, especially psychiatrists, in the observation and
treatment staff
- the improvement of communication between prisoners and staff; in
particular the creation of informal networks to listen to and support detainees
that use all the resources available, formal and informal (from operators of all
professions to detainees), for timely ‘crisis interventions’.
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