If we wanted to imagine for a moment some spaces that represent the
opposite of anarchy, well, maybe those spaces would be prisons, withtheir guards, their bars, their cold and armored doors, their walls
dirty with fascism and gratuitous violence, rigid routines and senseless
rules, with their hierarchical and power relations, where free thought,
creativity and humanity are profoundly suppressed; places where not even
the guards themselves are happy to be, where freedom simply does not
exist in any way. Prisons, one of the most violent aberrations of human
societies, dehumanize, alienate and are the living symbol of the cruelty
of States and of this fake respectable society and its coercive
structure. How many lies and hypocritical constructions behind the
continued existence of prisons, all aimed at trying to hide the total
disorder and failure of an inhuman society. Anarchists like Kropotkin
(in "Science and Anarchy" or in "Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution") I
believe have understood much more about the nature and well-being of
living beings than dozens of useless behavioral scientists, but on the
other hand it is known that science has always been used by politics to
support and justify constraints and violence (e.g. the use of psychiatry
to support European colonialism in Africa, up to the absurd constraints
during covid-19).
The fact that in various nations there are very different rates of
prisoners indicates not only a clear dissonance of this system but also
its fascist reasons. In Iceland, for example, we have about 35 people
per 100,000 inhabitants in prison for a total of 140, of which 39.7% are
foreigners. In "free and democratic" America we have 1,808,100, or 541
for every 100,000 inhabitants (35% of whom are of African origin,
although in the American population they constitute only 13%).
The dehumanizing issue of prisons has continued to bloody this piece of
land, which we call Italy, for some time now, where serving a sentence
almost coincides with the death penalty, even though this, in theory,
was abolished in 1948. The numbers speak for themselves, we have 108
people in prison for every 100,000 inhabitants, with an average
overcrowding of 132.5%, not to mention the sanitary conditions. Just on
January 9 (while I was writing this article) a 25-year-old boy took his
own life in Regina Coeli, where overcrowding reaches 191.3%! Did they
give him this name because they want them all dead??? In Sicily we have
an overcrowding rate that goes from 110% to 125%, according to GDD
(guarantor of prisoners' rights). In Italy, while money is being thrown
away to build ridiculous prisons in Albania, in the first ten days of
2025 we had 6 suicides in prison! In 2024, the neo-fascist Meloni-Nordio
administration (minister of injustice) reached the infamous record
figure of 89 inmates and 7 agents who died by suicide, of these 89,
almost half were foreigners.
But prisons are not just a problem of today, let's be clear. Although
art. 27 of our Constitution clearly states that "punishments cannot
consist of treatments contrary to the sense of humanity and must aim at
the re-education of the convicted", the problem of overcrowding in our
prisons attracted the attention of the European Court of Human Rights
already in 2013, when it ruled with the Torreggiani sentence condemning
Italy for the violation of art. 3 of the ECHR, arguing that prisoners
were subjected to inhuman and degrading treatments.
But the absurd thing about this bloody and fascist game between cops and
robbers is that the guards themselves are very sick! What do I mean?
From a study by Syed S. and others entitled "Global prevalence and risk
factors for mental health problems in police personnel: a systematic
review and meta-analysis" published in Occupational and Environmental
Medicine in 2020, it is highlighted that police all over the world are
at greater risk of developing mental health problems. The overall
prevalence was 14.6% for depression, 14.2% for post-traumatic stress
disorder, 9.6% for generalized anxiety disorder, 8.5% for suicidal
ideation, 5.0% for alcohol dependence, and 25.7% for hazardous alcohol use.
The rate of depression among law enforcement officers is five times
higher than that of the general civilian population. The number of
police officers who die by suicide is more than three times higher than
those who are fatally injured in the exercise of their "functions."
Statements by Vincenzo Musacchio, forensic criminologist, associated
with the Rutgers Institute on Anti-Corruption Studies (RIACS) in Newark
(USA).
Well yes, the order of this society is entrusted to this police and its
political puppeteers!
Exposure to violence and difficulty in asking for help are the main
reasons that psychologists present for the serious mental health
situation in the police (let alone in a context deeply based on
patriarchal values, superiority and punishments what is expected).
However, no one talks about the madness and intrinsic brutality of the
police, the continuous injustices, impositions and violence on
themselves and other human beings, the absence of any form of humanity
and self-awareness that this "work" entails.
I would like to recall the study of the psychologist Zimbardo and the
experiment in prison in 1971. A research where Zimbardo had to abruptly
interrupt the experiment due to serious episodes of violence perpetrated
by the fake guards towards the fake inmates. Zimbardo concluded that
even people with generally sound principles, if exposed to specific
situations, can carry out unregulated and violent actions, defining this
result as the "Lucifer Effect".
So who benefits from prisons and police forces? Not from human beings,
that's for sure. They always serve only the same oppressor who over the
years has changed his masks but not his intentions, they serve the King,
the Queen, the State, but also private detention and control companies
such as Serco (in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom) or
CoreCivic, Inc. in the USA. They serve to intimidate, to punish, to show
the symbol of power over lives, bodies and psyches. Thus, those who step
outside the straight and thin line drawn by the State, by social,
cultural and religious norms find themselves punished in every possible
way. "Deviance" must be contained, punished, medicated, hence the mental
hospitals, and when these do not exist, there are armies of
psychologists and psychiatrists ready to point the finger at the
individual or his family (often the mother) when they show signs of
depression or anxiety because they are not able to adapt to this
society. And then, there are prisons (in all their declinations from
remand prisons to maximum security ones) or, worse, even a mix of the
two, psychiatric prisons. There is no limit to the creativity of the
oppressor! And then, do you think that a country that has privatized
everything since the 90s onwards will not soon start privatizing prisons
and its inmates using the inhuman situation they are in as an excuse?
Are there solutions? Yes! Prisons like all guards have no need to exist!
"Crime", like many mental health problems are nothing more than symptoms
of capitalism (see also Paul Goodman in "crescere assurdi"). Kropotkin
in 1886 stated for example that a society built around cooperation
rather than competition would undoubtedly have fewer antisocial activities.
Alternatives exist and start from contrasting the logic of capitalism
and teaching how to live in mutual aid and mutual respect, and mutual
love, in understanding that no one can and should ever put themselves in
positions of authority over the lives of other living beings, from
non-human animals in intensive farming to human beings in prisons. I
suggest a beautiful work from 1976 entitled "Instead of Prisons. A
Handbook for Abolitionists" by Amy Davidson and others.
Gabriele Cammarata
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
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