Forget the mattress on the floor, wet towels against the barred windows to filter the hot air during the hot, forget pullovers slipped over each other for lack of blankets to protect against the cold. Forget the anxiety attacks and hospitalizations, the queues at the infirmary and self-mutilation. Forget the Italian prisons and weight of suffering and humiliation.
There is a prison, a few kilometers from Rimini, where breakfast is delivered by the restaurant next door, and when the worst enemy is solitude. It's the prison of the Capuchins in the Republic of San Marino, an inhabitant of most of the time. Currently, the only inmate of the Republic is a man of thirty years in prison Jan.
24 after a nasty case of abuse and violence in families. There must spend a year and could well serve his entire sentence without meeting a soul, except lawyers, visitors and police. Until now he had the former convent for himself two floors and six cells, a comfort to prisoners dream of neighboring Italy who called the facility "Seychelles".
The hardest part for him will be to kill time, but he has the choice between the library, the gym, the court for the walk, the TV room, kitchenette and dining room. The forced isolation of the single detainee has almost been compromised before it even started because of an Italian, who was arrested Jan.
10 for theft and damage, but justice was swift and was released a week later, just days before his conviction becomes enforceable. A new inmate is expected. It should arrive for a brief stay. It happens from time to time, but it never lasts very long. In 2010, for example, prison Capuchin has hosted seven detainees, six men and one woman, for a total of eighty-three days of detention.
In fact the prison was emptied of most of the year. In 2009, it had happened much less: 14 inmates, 13 men and one woman, for a total of 743 days. In 2008, annus horribilis, 12 men and one woman had passed through the Capuchins, for a total of 939 days in detention. Impressive figures, in their way, compared to those of Italian prisons overcrowded state of emergency has become chronic.
This peculiarity is explained not only by the size of the Republic of San Marino - a little over thirty thousand residents - but also by the penal code in the "oldest land of liberty." First, for comparable crimes, prison time is shorter than in Italy. The life does not exist and for the most atrocious crime conviction can at most reach thirty.
It is also necessary that the culprit has been arrested in flagrante delicto. If the sentence is imposed in absentia if he is a foreigner, an Italian, for example, it is very difficult for him to put hands on it. Finally, preventive detention is rarely applied to citizens of San Marino for the simple reason that the main reason that in Italy the defendant is sent behind bars rarely occurs: here, the risk of leakage is very slight.
Can one be a fugitive in a State which is crossed in a few minutes? Choose to leave it by renouncing all his property? The game still is not worth the candle. "And then we have a system of alternative penalties to prison," said Stefano Palmucci, an official of the Secretary of State for Justice, "much larger than the Italian system.
We have a board assistance to litigants who studies individual solutions for each convict, and this is the trusteeship of the interviews with psychologists. "The situation is so paradoxical that the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture had trouble to believe: "They had already come once or twice, but they did not find a single prisoner.
They were perplexed, they did not know whom to ask. Last time, remembers Stefano Palmucci, they crossed a prisoner and after writing their report, they have placed last in the standings for the humane conditions of detention in the world. "(The original article from La Repubblica ) 
There is a prison, a few kilometers from Rimini, where breakfast is delivered by the restaurant next door, and when the worst enemy is solitude. It's the prison of the Capuchins in the Republic of San Marino, an inhabitant of most of the time. Currently, the only inmate of the Republic is a man of thirty years in prison Jan.
24 after a nasty case of abuse and violence in families. There must spend a year and could well serve his entire sentence without meeting a soul, except lawyers, visitors and police. Until now he had the former convent for himself two floors and six cells, a comfort to prisoners dream of neighboring Italy who called the facility "Seychelles".
The hardest part for him will be to kill time, but he has the choice between the library, the gym, the court for the walk, the TV room, kitchenette and dining room. The forced isolation of the single detainee has almost been compromised before it even started because of an Italian, who was arrested Jan.
10 for theft and damage, but justice was swift and was released a week later, just days before his conviction becomes enforceable. A new inmate is expected. It should arrive for a brief stay. It happens from time to time, but it never lasts very long. In 2010, for example, prison Capuchin has hosted seven detainees, six men and one woman, for a total of eighty-three days of detention.
In fact the prison was emptied of most of the year. In 2009, it had happened much less: 14 inmates, 13 men and one woman, for a total of 743 days. In 2008, annus horribilis, 12 men and one woman had passed through the Capuchins, for a total of 939 days in detention. Impressive figures, in their way, compared to those of Italian prisons overcrowded state of emergency has become chronic.
This peculiarity is explained not only by the size of the Republic of San Marino - a little over thirty thousand residents - but also by the penal code in the "oldest land of liberty." First, for comparable crimes, prison time is shorter than in Italy. The life does not exist and for the most atrocious crime conviction can at most reach thirty.
It is also necessary that the culprit has been arrested in flagrante delicto. If the sentence is imposed in absentia if he is a foreigner, an Italian, for example, it is very difficult for him to put hands on it. Finally, preventive detention is rarely applied to citizens of San Marino for the simple reason that the main reason that in Italy the defendant is sent behind bars rarely occurs: here, the risk of leakage is very slight.
Can one be a fugitive in a State which is crossed in a few minutes? Choose to leave it by renouncing all his property? The game still is not worth the candle. "And then we have a system of alternative penalties to prison," said Stefano Palmucci, an official of the Secretary of State for Justice, "much larger than the Italian system.
We have a board assistance to litigants who studies individual solutions for each convict, and this is the trusteeship of the interviews with psychologists. "The situation is so paradoxical that the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture had trouble to believe: "They had already come once or twice, but they did not find a single prisoner.
They were perplexed, they did not know whom to ask. Last time, remembers Stefano Palmucci, they crossed a prisoner and after writing their report, they have placed last in the standings for the humane conditions of detention in the world. "(The original article from La Repubblica )
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