Dignità umana e tutela dei detenuti nello “Spazio di giustizia” dell’Unione europea

Abstract

The article aims to show how, more than twenty years after the Tampere European Council and more than ten years after the recognition of the binding legal force of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, the goal of a European area of (Freedom, Security and) Justice is still a work in progress. In fact, this is an objective that can only be fully achieved by overcoming certain critical issues that still persist and hamper its full implementation. In this context, the article examines the often-conflicting relationship between prison treatment and detention conditions on the one hand and the protection of the rights and human dignity of prisoners on the other. Through an examination of European jurisprudence (especially of the ECJ and only indirectly – if invoked – of the ECHR), the article shows how the situation of impasse in which Italy (amongst others EU States) has found itself for years in dealing with the problem of prison overcrowding, could perhaps be addressed by co-ordinated action from the Council of Europe and the European Union.