Felice Carabellese
University of Bari, Italy
Title: Closing Italian high security hospitals: A new treatment’s model
Biography
Biography: Felice Carabellese
Abstract
In the past, in Italy the treatment of mentally ill offenders at risk for recidivism (“dangerous to the society”) was entrusted by the Judicial Psychiatric Hospital (OPG). The OPG facilities were High Security Hospitals, directly managed by the Ministry of Justice. The six Italian OPG hospitals accommodated about 1,000 patients collectively. These patients were offenders who, with regard to our penal code, were adjudicated not guilty (or partially guilty) by reason of insanity for their criminal offense because they suffered from a severe mental disorder at the time of the crime and were found to be “dangerous to the society”. A recent law (Law n.9, February the 17th 2012) ratified the closure of the OPG hospitals (March the 31st 2015), which have been replaced by rehabilitation communities placed across all Italian regions, controlled by the National Health System on the model of what occurs in Italy for all the other mentally ill individuals, This presentation explains all the steps that have been made in the transition to this new program.