A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #37-24: Mirror of society. Violence in the Trapani prison. (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Last November 20, the results of a complex investigation involving the 
Trapani prison were made public, which led to the arrest of eleven 
prison police officers and the suspension from service of another 
fourteen guards. Overall, forty-six people are being investigated in 
various capacities for serious crimes such as torture, abuse of 
authority against prisoners, ideological falsehood and slander. ---- The 
investigations began in 2021 following the courageous reports of some 
prisoners, exasperated by the climate of real terror that had been 
established within the walls of the "Pietro Cerulli", the Trapani prison 
that everyone in the city has always known as "San Giuliano". The 
investigative activity, carried out by the Palermo prison police unit, 
has reconstructed the usual aberrant dynamics that characterize the life 
of Italian prisons and which, from time to time, come to light.

So what was happening at "San Giuliano"? Investigators reported a 
systematic use of violence, both physical and psychological, by prison 
officers against inmates: beatings, humiliations, abuse. At the center 
of the investigation is the Blue section of the Trapani prisons, an 
isolation ward initially dedicated to prisoners with particular problems 
and needs (immigrants, fragile or vulnerable subjects who require 
special surveillance or who must be separated from the rest of the 
prison population for disciplinary or security reasons). But as in the 
worst psycho-social experiments, the brutality and sadism of the 
uniformed torturers would have even increased in the presence of these 
people. The investigations - supported by wiretaps and images - would 
have revealed the presence of a "squadretta", a group of agents charged 
with repressing the inmates with brutal and illegitimate methods: «As 
soon as something happens, we go up to the ward... we beat them up» - 
one of the wiretapped agents would have said, referring to the inmates - 
and if the doctors talk «we beat them up too».

The public prosecutor of Trapani, Gabriele Paci, expressly spoke of the 
Trapani prison as a «free zone» in which violence was a common practice. 
This violence would have been the solution adopted by the guards to 
manage the increasingly frequent protests of the inmates, tired of a 
situation of chronic unlivability in the penitentiary.

Specifically, among the many disgusting things reported by the 
authorities, the inmates were beaten with slaps, punches, kicks and 
sometimes dragged along the corridors of the section, often already 
immobilized and unable to react.

In other cases, the suspects allegedly threw water and piss on the 
prisoners, humiliating and mocking them. Or it happened that foreign 
prisoners were forced to undress in front of the officers and their 
colleagues, amid laughter and offensive comments about the size of their 
genitals, all seasoned with predictable racist insults. Not all the 
jailers were directly involved in the abuse, but it emerged that 
numerous officers - although present during the episodes of violence - 
failed to intervene. A climate of impunity and comradely silence 
reinforced by numerous service reports in which the prisoners were 
falsely accused of aggression or violent behavior.

As always happens in these cases, the (few) reactions from the 
institutions or political forces were all marked by indignation, on the 
one hand, and the dutiful need, on the other, to isolate the "bad 
apples" who tarnish the respectability and good name of the entire 
prison police force.

We do not feel the need to be guarantors towards individuals who 
actively operate within a total institution such as prison, and 
therefore we will not join the chorus of those who defend at all costs 
the need for prison as a socially useful tool for the "re-education" or 
"reintegration" into society of those who have made mistakes.

The investigators, if they want or are able, will have the task of 
shedding complete light on what happened in the corridors and cells of 
the Blue section of "San Giuliano". Our task is to analyze from a social 
and political point of view the umpteenth news story in which an Italian 
prison reveals itself as a place where torture and abuse of all kinds 
are carried out.

Violence within penitentiaries is not an episodic but systemic fact. The 
events in Trapani offer a brutal cross-section of the violence on which 
prison is based, any prison, as an institution conceived to give 
substance to the revenge of the state. Prison violence mirrors the 
violence that occurs in society and it couldn't be otherwise. The 
hierarchical culture that underpins the hierarchical society in which we 
live will never be able to produce a "re-educational" prison because it 
is a contradiction in terms that is completely unsolvable with the 
instruments of law as we have always known it. If the law crystallizes 
and gives shape to violent and hierarchical power relations within 
society, its repressive manifestation will never be able to generate 
anything good or humane and, in a completely natural way, will 
contribute to perpetuating other injustice, other violence, other 
oppression.

This is why we are frankly tired of hearing, every time, about a few 
"bad apples". Because even taking into account that every individual, if 
they want, can behave decently even in an intrinsically repressive role, 
we are equally aware of how labile and narrow this perimeter of autonomy 
and conscience is in an inhuman and dehumanizing context such as prison.

No, we do not save the "good part" of prisons and those who work there, 
simply because we do not believe in the goodness of prison. News like 
that coming from Trapani will never surprise us as long as prisons exist 
and as long as violence and conflicts are the inevitable products of a 
society founded on inequality and domination.

Alberto La Via

https://umanitanova.org/specchio-della-societa-le-violenze-nel-carcere-di-trapani/
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