NYT Live Updating Coronavirus: Italian prisoners, unable to receive visitors, revolt.

[Mike 03]

As much of northern Italy enters a lockdown — with restrictions affecting nearly 16 million people — prisoners across the country have rioted after being denied visits from family members.

Protests were held in at least two dozen prisons across the country on Sunday and Monday after the government banned visits and cut down day-release programs, Italian news outlets reported. Several people managed to escape from a prison in Foggia, a town in southern Italy, according to the news agency ANSA.

snip

The restrictions prohibit face-to-face visits, substituting them with phone calls and video chats. In some “exceptional cases,” personal visits can take place as long as the inmate and visitor are kept about six feet apart.

On Sunday, six inmates died after a riot in a prison in Modena, also in northern Italy, when they apparently overdosed on medicines stolen from the infirmary, Italian news media reported.

“The situation is serious and dramatic,” Daniela Caputo, the secretary of Dirpolpen, an association of penitentiary police officers, said on Sky News Italia.

Donato Capece, secretary general of Sappe, a union representing guards, said that prisons were unprepared for an outbreak.

NYT Live Updates, Coronavirus: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/world/coronavirus-news.html#link-4315ecea

[virgogal]

1. Tough.I have a good

friend in a nursing home in Boston,no visitors because of a flu case.