(Finance) – It was held today at theJuvenile penitentiary institute of Bari the pilot initiative for the Drug Addiction Prevention “WeFree Inside: prevention and legality to build a future“. The day opened with a conference on the topic of juvenile delinquency and addictions in relation to legality and prevention with the contribution of public institutions, private profit and non-profit entities, representatives of the academic and scientific world, followed by a meeting and exchange of experiences between young prisoners and professional educators of San Patrignano, with the testimony of young people who have already successfully overcome addictions.
In his speech Paolo Bonassi, Chief Social Impact Officer of Intesa Sanpaolo, commented: “Wefree Dentro is part of the series of projects that Intesa Sanpaolo creates and supports for the prison world and for the addiction prevention together with the most important Italian Third Sector entities. Thanks to the collaboration with the San Patrignano Foundation the initiative offers a different moment to young prisoners, leading them to focus on their potential and on the importance of everyday choices. From today’s meeting they will be able to draw useful ideas to improve their situation and have greater confidence in the ‘after'”.
A particularly interesting day also from an educational point of view, as explained Antonio Boschini, therapeutic director of San Patrignano: “The aim is to experiment with a new approach to support minors to offer them useful tools to rediscover their potential, to overcome fragility and to escape from addictions, which increasingly among young people and sometimes in prisons are expressed in addictions to psychotropic drugs. “WeFree Dentro” is aimed at one of the the most vulnerable categories of our country, to build possible paths out of marginalization and social exclusion”.
As of December 31, 2023, drug addicts in prison in Italy were 26,268, 29% of the total, to which were added 3,901 people in charge of the External Penal Enforcement Office (Uepe) for alternative measures to detention. In 2023, moreover, there was a 10% increase in minors reported to the judicial authorities for drug-related criminal offences.
According to the latest Annual Report to Parliament on the phenomenon of drug addiction in Italy 2024, they are four out of ten young people between 15 and 19 years old who, in 2023, used narcotic substances at least once. This involves 960 thousand young people between the ages of 15 and 19 who consumed psychoactive substances in 2023, 39% of the student population, who report having consumed an illegal substance at least once in their life, over 680 thousand (28%) in the last year.