Rome city with three million inhabitants seat of temporal and spiritual power, propulsive centre for the whole country thanks to a great concentration of functions and activities. City of stark contrasts, yet attentive and sensitive to social problems.
Rome host of five prisons Regina Coeli and the complex of Rebibbia with more than 2000 detainees; after the amnesty, Rome prisons are a model for the entire penal system of Italy.
In Rome, for ten years, there has existed a collegiate organism, ideated by the Comune Council with the aim of collecting and co-ordinating all data regarding prisons, so as to be able beside to intervene in order to guarantee the rights of detainees.
This organism is the Permanent Citizens Council for Prison Problems of Rome, instituted at the Fifth Department, Union Organisation Area of Solidarity, with the deliberation of the Comune Council number 157, 31 July 1997: "to the Council all the voluntary and non-profit organisations may adhere, whatever their juridical forms by them.
But they must be non profit making compatible with aim of solidarity, having headquarters and operative in the territory of Rome and being concerned, even if not exclusively, with prison problems. Otherwise, experts and personalities operating in the sector interested in reaching the aims of the Council may adhere, without the right to vote.
The Council, proposes to:
- stimulate, verify and control the functioning of central and decentralised services which offer services in the sector envisaged by State, Regional, Provincial and Comunnal Norms;
-take care of relations with the Penitentiary Authorities and particularly with the Social Services within and outside Penitentiary Insitutions of the Ministero di Grazia e Giustizia;
- formulate proposals to the Mayor, the Juncta, the relevant Assessori, Council of the Comune, directed at obtaining the optimal functioning of the services, the institution of new ones, and of expressing views,
- carry out works of sensibilising on penitentiary subjects or ones of general interest connected with penitentiary problems;
- stimulate contributions and participation in new works of the Council of other Voluntary Workers, of Social forces and Communal and Company, in relation to themes under discussion;
- promote the participation in the actual work of detainees, ex-detainees or alternative measures to detention,
- take care of relations with the Commission on Criminality and Problems of prisons in the Regione Lazio, the Provincia and the Commissione Nazionale per i rapporti con le Regioni e gli Enti Locali del Ministero della Grazia e Giustizia, not to mention with every other Body or organ which deals with questions connected with penitentiary problems;
Originally, within the Council, there are constituted four working groups: Commission for Civil rights, Commission for Gozzini Laws, Commission for Health in Prisons and Commission for minor detainees, each with the job of: monitoring signals of problems relating to the objects of enquiries and elaborating strategies of intervention to propose to administrations.
This first phase of study highlights some important quantitive and descriptive elements of the prison context in Rome and of the initiatives now being carried out; But it provides a summary and fragmentary picture.
So, the components themselves of the Commissions are the first to feel the esigences of a more organic instrument of work that, parting from an accurate monitoring of the siuation, including "formal visits to all present prison structures, to the end of verifying the state of efficiency, and direct relevance of problems communicated from detainees to voluntary and non profit organisations, consents, then, to plan interventions in a more systematic way".
