The Council of Europe published its last report on SPACE (Annual Penal Statistic Study). The Italian situation got better during the last year but is still not entirely satisfactory: jails are still overpopulated and life conditions remain critical.

The overcrowding of Italian prisons was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights in 2013, when it sentenced Italy for violating Article 3 of the European Convention, which prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

The court gave Italy one year to improve the situation. Today, a recent SPACE report shows that the country has partly achieved the objective and that the overpopulation has indeed decreased - but this does not mean that the problem has been solved.

In fact, despite the auspicious statement of the minister of justice, Andrea Orlando, who committed to fully resolving the problem, there is still a lot to do. Currently there are more than 54,000 inmates for 49,545 places, placing Italy 11th in Europe for the rate of prison overcrowding.

Mother of all evils

This problem cannot be ignored because it has serious consequences for the lives of convicts. According to Antigone's national prison observatory, some detainees are living in cells smaller than four square meters, their health is generally neglected, and they do not have access to adequate education or work projects.

Difficult prison conditions also lead to violence and suicides: 27.5 percent of deaths in Italian prisons are suicides, whereas the European average is 11.2 percent. These figures speak clearly about the necessity of bringing change to Italy's prison system.

Many drug offenders

The Annual Penal Statistics report also evidences that 34.7 percent of Italian prisoners have been arrested for drug offences, while in contrast this is the case for only 16.5 percent of European inmates. Drug offences are the main reason for incarceration on our continent.

This fact is a sign that it is time to think about decriminalization of minor offences linked to drugs and about the drug policy reform. This would also represent a (partial) solution to the problem of prisons overcrowding, and especially so in Italy.