Italian associations for mental health and Antigone are warning of the risk of backward steps on the issue of psychiatric treatment for detainees. Judicial Psychiatric Hospitals in Italy were abolished in 2014, replaced by designated facilities to help detainees with severe issues who cannot be accommodated by alternatives to imprisonment. But a new decree threatens to transform the new psychiatric departments into something similar to the old penitentiary asylums by opening these facilities even to those under observation for their psychiatric conditions.