Italy's Prisons, Already Overcrowded, Now Overheated

Italy's prisons were overcrowded before the summer, and the heat made it worse. The New York Times reported this week that as temperatures in the country continued to approach 90 degrees Fahrenheit, inmates have been sleeping on concrete cell floors, and that even the guards have complained.

The Times framed the situation as a compounding of two pressures rather than a single failure: a prison estate that was already beyond capacity, and a run of high temperatures that left little relief inside the buildings. The paper's dispatch is one of the few pieces of foreign coverage this week to look past the political headlines and at the conditions inside Italian institutions.

The detail that guards have joined the complaints is significant in the Times' account. It suggests a strain that is not confined to those in custody, and it gives the story a second constituency — staff — that the paper treats as part of the same problem rather than a separate grievance.