Associazione Antigone findings in Reuters Report on prisons overcrowding

A recent Reuters report highlights how heatwaves are making the critical conditions in many European prisons even more visible: overcrowding, ageing facilities, poor ventilation, and conditions that become even harder to endure during extreme temperatures.
France, Italy and Belgium are among the countries examined.

For Italy, Reuters uses data from Antigone. At the end of July, the occupancy rate of Italian prisons stood at 139.7%.
This figure reflects a structural situation that extreme heat is only making more visible. In Italy, on 14 July, a coalition of organisations working for the rights of people in detention – also promoted by Antigone – organised simultaneous visits to 34 prisons, precisely to draw attention to living conditions inside prisons.

The Reuters report also shows how issues that are often portrayed as exclusively national are in fact part of a broader European prison crisis.

Monitoring, collecting data and documenting what happens inside prisons is essential to making this reality visible. Beyond Italy’s borders, too.

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