translated from Spanish: Italy puts masks on inmates in three country’s prisons

Italy’s Ministry of Justice announced on Saturday that prisoners in three prisons in Rome, Milan and Salerno will begin, by the middle of this month, to manufacture surgical masks to cover the deficit of this essential element of protection for health care for coronavirus sufferers. Inmates will work on eight machines trained to manufacture up to 400,000 masks a day. The first remittances will be distributed between the prison population and security guards, especially vulnerable to contagion. Once this phase is complete, the “considerable surplus of masks resulting from operations” will be distributed among Italian hospitals. Earlier last month, at the start of the toughest moments of the crisis, Italian prisons became the scene of escapes and riots in the face of the inability of the authorities to ensure the safety of either prisoners or guards. The Minister of Justice, Alfonso Bonafede, confirmed that a total of 6,000 prisoners participated in riots or assaults of some kind, a dozen inmates died of overdose and 12 staged escape attempts. A total of 40 prison guards were injured.

Original source in Spanish