As of April, Italy’s prisons held over 62,000 people in facilities built for just 51,000, according to a report by Antigone, an NGO that monitors prison conditions. Suicides are surging, with 45 inmates killing themselves this year as of July 24. In 2024 some 91 suicides were recorded among prisoners — a record, surpassing the previous high from 2022.
From the Capitoline to Rebibbia
Alemanno’s accounts often focus on the individual stories of his fellow inmates such as Roberto, a 77-year-old who can barely see and walks with difficulty but still has to serve three years of detention.
“What is Roberto doing in jail? What social revenge still needs to be carried out on this person, who is struggling to walk, who cannot see or hear, who is in danger of dying in jail, and who has already served almost half of his sentence? Could he not at least be sent under house arrest, to try to care for himself at home?” Alemanno wrote.
His letters are co-signed by another inmate, Fabio Balbo, known as “the Scribe of Rebibbia” as he is the go-to person for writing applications for prison benefits and a prisoners’ rights activist. The two have formed a “strange alliance,” as the former mayor put it in his latest letter.
Alemanno was sentenced in 2022 to one year and 10 months for illegal party funding and influence peddling as part of a broader probe, dubbed “Mafia Capitale,” which uncovered corruption in the award of public contracts in Rome. Alemanno was granted his freedom on community service probation. But when judges realized that he was not respecting the terms of his probation, they decided he should serve his prison sentence.
Alemanno is conducting politics even behind bars, leading a hard-right micro-party called “Independence!” whose goal is to pull Italy out of the EU and to fight the “cosmopolitan elites” to defend “the Italian people.”
