Rome: Italian prisons must allow inmates to make love to visiting partners, the country’s top court ruled.
The Constitutional Court said a prisoner’s right to have sex with a spouse or partner should only be denied “for reasons of security or maintaining order and discipline, or by the danger of the inmate or judicial reasons”.
The ruling triggered calls from rights activists for officials to create “love rooms” inside prisons for more comfortable conjugal visits.
It comes amid wider prison reforms rolled out in Italy by Giorgia Meloni’s government.
After a spate of hunger strikes and violent protests in Italy last year, the prime minister threatened a tougher stance, before passing a law in August promising more prison personnel, simplified procedures for early release, and improvements in community care facilities.
The court ruling on sex for prisoners came after an inmate serving time in a prison in the northern city of Asti was denied the right to have sex with his wife.
The prisoners’ rights group Hands Off Cain has called for “stanze dell’amore” (love rooms) to be established after the Constitutional Court ruled in favour of the inmate in Asti.
“Freedom to enjoy emotional relations constitutes a constitutionally protected right,” the court said in a ruling on the case.
The 34-year-old prisoner, identified only as A.S., took his complaint to Italy’s highest court after his previous request for conjugal access was rejected by a regional court in Turin. The details of his crime and sentence have not been revealed.
“It is important for prisoners to have affectionate relations,” Rita Bernardini, the Italian president of Hands Off Cain, said.
“Spain, France and even Romania have already created these rooms; Italy is way behind. We have an antiquated approach to sexual relations. It’s hypocritical.”
Irma Conti, who heads the national body charged with protecting prisoners’ rights, said the government was considering “the best solution” but noted the most practical option might be to issue inmates with a permit so they could leave prison for a fleeting conjugal visit.
“If you think of Regina Coeli [Rome’s central prison], where there are more than 1000 people, one room would not be enough,” Conti told Il Messaggero.
Despite concerns about oppressive conditions, Bernardini said not every prison in Italy was affected by overcrowding, and her organisation had identified 40 prisons where love rooms could be created to ensure couples could have a private life.
She said these rooms should be furnished so they could also be used for family visits. “Prisons should create a room that resembles a home as much as possible,” she said.
Meloni’s prison reforms have been described by ministers as “prison humanisation”.
But Antigone, a prison welfare organisation, said the law did not go far enough. According to its own data, Italian prisons currently house more than 62,000 inmates, more than 15,000 above capacity.
The Telegraph, London
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