Prison, the numbers are chilling: in 2025, 1,584 critical events were managed.

Reduced staff in the face of an increasingly concerning overcrowding, but also an intense operational activity with arrests, reports, and seizures. The average presence (January 2025 – February 2026) is 360 inmates (315 men and 45 women).

One statistic is enough to capture the situation at the Pasquale Di Lorenzo Detention Center, a prison managed by Anna Puci: the Prison Police, led by Chief Commissioner Aurora Monica Mirabile (in the photo), in 2025 faced the management of 1,584 events (averaging 4 per day), the majority classified as “critical”, for violations of criminal laws consisting of acts of violence, threats, resistance, insults, damage, self-harm, and protests, and was also engaged in managing serious critical issues at risk to their own safety, suffering physical assaults while also intervening in fights among inmates. An alarming number that emerged just days before the celebration of the 209th anniversary of the founding of the Corps, which took place at the Teatro Pirandello.

In the Agrigento prison, last year there were over two hundred ordinary searches, some of which were extraordinary with ongoing investigative activities. Other numbers that illustrate the impressive work carried out by the Prison Police personnel on duty at the “Petrusa” prison. From January 1 to December 31, 2025, a total of 84 mobile phones and drugs (cocaine, hashish, marijuana) weighing a total of 474 grams were found and seized. The Prison Police proceeded with arrests and reports of about fifty inmates. Average numbers were also recorded in the first two months of the current year: in February, two separate operations led to the seizure of numerous smartphones, microcell phones, and rudimentary weapons. Also noteworthy is the suicide of a fifty-year-old inmate, residing in a municipality in the Nisseno area, and the incident of an Italian inmate, housed in the medium-security section, who assaulted and injured an officer with punches to the face after being denied outdoor time beyond the scheduled hours.

On the current organizational structure, there are about 200 units in service (236 are expected). Several times the unions have written to the head of the Department of Prison Administration and to the Regional Director of Prison Administration and not only that, among those on the front line, a note of merit goes to Salvatore Gallo Cassarino, regional delegate for Sicily of the Autonomous Prison Police Union, and to Calogero Spinelli, national leader of the Federation of Autonomous Unions Cnpp – Spp, who have managed critical events and staff shortages with great professionalism.

“There was a time when we had almost 390 inmates – some prison officers recount. Over time, the concern and discomfort of the staff has grown, many have had psychophysical problems.”

Staffing, assaults, and structural problems. In recent years, something has definitely changed, also thanks to the valuable work of Director Anna Puci: “The situation has improved, we have units that we did not have before and there is serenity, even though it can happen that stronger critical events and moments of discouragement occur.”