Italy’s first-ever prisoner sex room opened for business on Friday, when a convict was given a visit from his girlfriend in a special room at an Umbria region jail.
Court Recognises Right to Intimacy
The private meetings for selected prisoners come after a Constitutional Court decision that recognised prisoners’ right to have “intimate encounters” with partners visiting from the outside world.
“We are happy because everything went smoothly but it is necessary to maintain the maximum privacy to protect the people involved,” Umbria’s ombudsman for prisoners’ rights, Giuseppe Caforio, told the ANSA news agency.
“We can say that a sort of experiment went well and in the next few days there will be other meetings,” he said of the first intimate meeting at the prison in Terni.
Permitted in Other European Nations
In the January 2024 ruling, the court stated that prisoners must be given the right to have private meetings with spouses or long-term partners without prison guards monitoring them.
The ruling mentioned that so-called conjugal visits were already permitted in most European nations. They include France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden and others.
Last week, the ministry of justice put out guidelines explaining that prisoners approved for intimate encounters should have use of a toilet and bed-contained room for at least two hours.
Stringent Background Checks on Buyers
According to the guidelines, the room door must always be open to allow the intervention of prison wardens.
Italy’s jails have among the highest rates of overcrowding in Europe and have seen a recent surge in suicides. Official statistics show that the nation has more than 62,000 prisoners, over 21% more than the official prison maximum capacity.
