In the Senate Alemanno’s complaint from prison: “Here you die of heat, but politics sleeps with air conditioning”

In Italian prisons there are over 62,000 prisoners and detainedover 10 thousand more than the regulatory capacity. The average actual average overcrowding rate is at least 133%. The numbers presented in the XXI report of the Association Antigone on the conditions of detention in Italy, Breathlessdate back to April 30th. In these days of torrid heat they make even more anger and bewilderment e More and more it is clear that the problem of the overcrowding of prisons only affects those who are in the institutes of punishment Or who has someone close to a sentence.

He remembered it powerfully in the Senate Gianni Alemanno even without being present. “Here you die of heat, but politics sleeps with air conditioning” is one of the passages of the diary of the former mayor of Rome on the situation in Rebibbia in these days of torrid heat, read in the classroom by Michele Fina, representative of the Democratic Party, who intervened in the debate on the reform of the separation of careers.

In the diary read by Fina in the classroom Alemanno explains that the temperature in the Rebibbia cells grows by climbing the penitentiary plans. At the last there are 10 degrees more than the ground floor. The former mayor of Rome says that the overcrowding combined with the heat makes life in prison “torture”.

This is the complete page of Gianni Alemanno’s diary:

Rebibbia, 29 June 2025 – 180th day of prison.

If a student wanted to evidently experience the meaning of the physical concept of “thermal gradient” should come here to Rebibbia and move from the ground floor to the second and last floor.

On the ground floor, thanks to the humidity that comes from the ground, the summer heat is still bearable, but going up the stairs that lead to the second floor, the temperature gradually increases by at least a couple of degrees for each of the four ramps that make up these stairs.

So when you get to the top, there are almost ten degrees of temperature.

If then, like myself, you live in the last cell of the corridor, the one exposed to the sun not only on the ceiling but also on two sides, “the oven effect” is a reality.

The Rebibbia prison was built in the 70s when all the structures were in reinforced concrete without insulation and therefore perfect for transmitting the cold during the winter and heat during the summer.

But in winter you put two blankets, what do you do in summer?

Obviously, conditioning systems in the cells and corridors are absentthe prisoners turn in the beach version (to say the least), they throw themselves into the cot as if they were on a beach bed (in order not to make other comparisons), miserable tricks are invented to contrast a few degree of temperature.

Luciano, our elderly of cell, expert bricklayer and master head, has developed a complicated system of communicating vessels to distribute running water to refresh water bottles and a little the environment.

Then there are the fans, the ancient table ones, no more than two in cell, which – if you have the money on the current account – You can buy from the administration.

We have only one, because what I bought has not been delivered to me for fifteen days, given that the administration, too committed to organizing plentoric sporting and entertainment events inside the prison (very useful to make a good impression in the news, of little interest for the detained people), is unable to give impetus even to the simplest bureaucratic practices, such as buying a few fan or any medicine, nor manages to appoint the head of the head of A few weeks (since the great Cinzia was gone), just as it also happens in the problematic G11 arm.

This hot hot heat, which we will bring us on us for the next few months, adds to the shame of overcrowding.

But Politics sleeps (with air conditioning) and does not realize that already in June we reached five prison protests around Italysensational error (now also a crime, after the security decree) by prisoners, madness from overheated brains and by people piled up one on the other.

As I said several times, here in the arm G8 of Rebibbia we are at the “parioli” of the Lazio prisons, but also here, without a Caporeparto, things that should not happen.

Like a person sick with scabies who is put into our department for several days, as a “normal” person who is housed in the transsexual department, as a detained person left to sleep one night in the infirmary.

Because they no longer know where to put them these prisoners, whose number grows by hundreds every month that passes.

Because the surveillance courts, especially that of Rome, do not have staff (nor mental elasticity) and cannot send alternatives even the people who have all the requirements to obtain these benefits provided for by law.

In my department there is Mario, arrested at 81 years for a definitive sentence for fifteen years earlier financial crimes, who, after a month and a half in prison, finally five days ago he was recognized by the surveillance court the right to go to house arrest.

But, after five days, Mario is still here!

With his legs full of wounds and crusts (I don’t know for what illness) in plain sight under the shorts that he too has to wear to endure the heat. He still is here and nobody knows why!

But politics sleeps (with air conditioning), waiting for the commissioner in charge to magically build the new prisons that should host the 14,000 people who are detained more than those that by regulation our prison institutions could host.

The latest news is that they will be purchased with 32 million euros of the prefabricated structures which, once installed, should accommodate 384 more inmates, for a cost of 83,000 euros for each prisoner!

Considering the months necessary for the installation, these prefabricated ones will not even be able to host the new people who in the meantime will have been brought to prison.

But politics sleeps (with air conditioning) and forgets the overcrowded and overheated prisons, waiting indifferently that the European Court of Human Rights sanctions Italy for inhuman treatment and torture of the people held.

In 2024, 71 people detained took their lives, in the first six months of 2025, we are already 38, a suicide every five days, numbers that shout revenge, but who do not make noise, because those who die in prison, often, dies twice, in the cell and in collective indifference.

But politics if it does not sleep, makes the fierce face “law and order” that tells citizens “punish criminals”, a pity that in these way they also punish the prison police officers, second victims of the heat and overcrowding, which run in the hot air of the departments, without even being able to take off the mimetic uniform.

Of course, until yesterday to divert attention there was a new war that could spread from Iran to all the Mediterranean, but for some days the news have only been talking about the heat that is breaking down on citizens and tourists.

On prisoners right? Problem removed, even journalistically?

Someone will tell me: but you also sleep when you were minister, or mayor, or deputy.

No, my loved ones, I lost sleep, I met meetings at three in the morning (ask the poor policemen who signed me up), maybe I couldn’t solve all the problems, maybe I couldn’t control everything that happened behind my shoulders, but I had the continuous obsession with the people I had to give answers. Because when you do politics, and above all you take institutional commitments, you cannot turn your heads on the other side, you cannot close your eyes because it is not convenient to see.

Because this is not just a mistake, it’s a shame.