Have you ever wondered how difficult it would be for prisoners to be behind bars for years and have little interaction with loved ones. Well, Italian authorities are trying to relax this to some extent.
Have you ever wondered how difficult it would be for prisoners to be behind bars for years and have little interaction with loved ones. Well, Italian authorities are trying to relax this to some extent. The first ever “sex room” in European countries opened earlier this week when a male prisoner was allowed to make a special visit to his female partner in the Central Umbria region.
“Everything goes smoothly”
Some prisoners in Italy are eligible to recognize the right of prisoners to “meet intimate meetings” with their partners after a Constitutional Court ruling.
“We are happy because everything goes well, but it is necessary to maintain the maximum privacy to protect the people involved,” he added. “We can say that one kind of experiment is going well, and over the next few days, there are other meetings.”
Court ruling
The court ruled, published last January, said prisoners should have the right to hold private meetings with their spouses or long-term partners without prison guards paying close attention to them. The ruling states that such visits have been allowed in most European countries including France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, etc.
Ministries set boundaries
Last week, the Italian Ministry of Justice issued guidelines that state that prisoners allow intimate meetings to enter rooms with beds and toilets for up to two hours. The guide adds that the doors of the room should remain unlocked so that they can intervene when needed.
Italy has more than 62,000 prison inmates, but the country suffers from the crowding problem, as the number is more than 20% higher than the official maximum capacity. Italian prisons have also witnessed a surge in suicides recently.
