The former director of the Siano prison Angela Paravati and the former commander of the Penitentiary Police department Simona Poli have been released, having ended up in prison as part of the investigation into alleged crimes in the management of the penitentiary of the Calabrian capital. For both the judges of the Review replaced custody in prison with a measure prohibiting work for 12 months. Leaves Rome Rebibbia prison Angela Paravati (defended by lawyers Salvatore Staiano and Francesco Iacopino) while Simona Poli (defended by the lawyer Francesco Iacopino) leaves house arrest.
The investigation began on February 15th and involves a total of 76 people. Twenty-six were arrested: 16 in prison and 10 under house arrest. The acting public prosecutor spoke of a “disturbing picture”, Vincenzo Capomolla. The investigation led to the discovery that two criminal groups had been set up in the prison dedicated to drug trafficking and the sale of SIM cards and mobile phones.
The former director is charged with various crimes, ranging from external complicity in criminal association and from forgery to ideological falsity and corruption. This last crime derives from the fact that Paravati would have facilitated the transfer of an assistant head of the penitentiary police force to the Surveillance Court of Catanzaro. In exchange Paravati would have obtained a stay for himself and her family in a hotel in Pizzo. According to the prosecution, she “sold her role to give the image of herself to the outside world as the director of a model prison, building her career on this false representation, so much so that she landed the directorate of the Penitentiary Administration of Calabria”.
For twelve years he led the Ugo Caridi prison in Catanzaro which became a “model” of integration between the prison population and the outside world: laboratories, schools, universities. The Calabrian penitentiary had not recorded tensions and riots, not even during the protests of the Covid period, Catanzaro had remained a happy island. For the DDA of the Calabrian capital, however, that peace behind bars would have been the result of favors and concessions that the former director Angela Paravati would have made to the inmates, going well beyond what was foreseen by the rules.