From The Blog
Cruel and Usual Punishment
, 10 February 2023
“... According to the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, also known as the ‘Nelson Mandela Rules’, to keep a prisoner in solitary confinement for 22 hours a day for more than 15 days is a form of torture, acceptable ‘in no circumstances’. Yet it is normal procedure in Italy’s 41-bis regime, named after an amendment to the Prison Administration Act introduced as ‘emergency’ legislation in 1975 but modified several times since, including after the mafia killing of the Sicilian judge Giovanni Falcone and his five bodyguards near Palermo in 1992 ... ”