“Automatic early release? False and misleading”. Prison unions against the Dap vademecum on the Prisons decree

Controversy over the vademecum released by Department of Penitentiary Administration to inform institutions of changes contained in the Prisons decree. The Autonomous Union of the Penitentiary Police raised the issue. The union is targeting a provision provided by the Dap, contained in a circular distributed in these hours. “Every time the prisoner makes a request for the alternative measures to detention, automatically the supervisory magistrate will apply the early release reduction“, we read in the handbook on the provision, which, according to the Dap, must be made available “with direct distribution to prisoners and internees”.

In the document, addressed to the supervisors and directors of the institutes who will then have to distribute it in the structures, seven different points are explained:new improvements of the detention conditions introduced by the decree”. Among these, the increase in the number of phone calls available for detained persons, in addition to other bureaucratic measures and facilitations provided for by the regulations. Among other things, it is expected that “the sentence will be reduced by 45 days every six monthsautomatically without the need to make any request to the supervisory magistrate, if the prisoner participates in the re-education activities”. A simplifying concept of article five of the same decree has ended up in the crosshairs, the one on interventions in the matter of early release. Point four of the vademecum states: “Every time the prisoner makes a request for alternative measures to detention, automatically the supervisory magistrate will apply the reduction for early release”.

Two lines heavily contested by the Osapp union, which with its secretary attacks: “It is wrongly stated that every time a prisoner presents an application he is entitled to early release days. This is a statement not only falsebut also dangerously misleading“, says Leo Beneduci, who underlines “a macroscopic error that a department of the Ministry of Justice cannot afford”. The Penitentiary Police unionist explains: “Point 4 of the document erroneously states that every time a prisoner presents an application he is entitled to early release days. This is a statement that is not only false, but also dangerously misleading”. According to Beneduci, the vademecum “has not been translated into other languagescreating further barriers in a prison system that hosts prisoners of different nationalities. This lack is not just an oversight, but a deliberate exclusion which further complicates the understanding and application of the rules”. For the secretary of Osapp “this vademecum is not only a poorly written documentbut the symbol of a system that has lost its compass, is the reflection of an administration that is navigating by sight, incapable of understanding its own laws, let alone applying them with justice and fairness”.