Lawyers slam cabinet's draft plan to cut jail overcrowding

(ANSA) - ROME, AUG 17 - Italian criminal lawyers on Saturday slammed a reform currently being considered by the government under which alternative measures to detention, including house arrest or probation, would be evaluated for detainees who have not been convicted for serious offenses and have to serve residual sentences of less than a year.
    "The government put itself in a blind alley which it will have a hard time exiting", said the president of the Union of Italian criminal chambers, Francesco Petrelli.
    "The hypothesis of house arrest for detainees who need to finish serving short terms (about 8,000 inmates) implies a complex jurisdictional evaluation and to overcome objective obstacles.
    "According to government experts, it could currently provide no more than 200 house detentions - a trifling number compared to the urgent need for deflationary measures", added Petrelli.
    "The government's prison-centric policies are a grave step backwards, including for the security of citizens and they are inevitably destined to fail", Petrelli added, stressing the position of criminal lawyers who have "always supported policies and laws favouring the implementation of alternative measures to prison".
    He added that the union he represents has not seen the draft text on which the government is working.
    However, it is "surprised that, after issuing and converting a prisons decree that should have resolved the issue", the government "realized that new urgent interventions are necessary".
    The measure, which was discussed on August 7 at a meeting between Justice Minister Carlo Nordio, and the National guarantor for persons deprived of liberty, is being considered by the justice ministry.
    The government has mooted more alternatives to jail time and shorter sentences as a way to resolve an overcrowding crisis that has helped spur a record wave of suicides among inmates and guards. (ANSA).