Santa Maria Capua Vetere Prison (), officially the Casa circondariale "Francesco Uccella", is a prison in Santa Maria Capua Vetere, in the Province of Caserta in Campania, Italy. It has been in use since 1996 as a casa circondariale, a prison that also holds people awaiting trial. It was opened without a connection to the public water network and received running water only in 2022.
On 6 April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, prison police officers beat inmates of the prison's Nilo ward after a protest. A preliminary investigations judge later called it "a horrible massacre". Footage of the beatings was published by the newspaper Domani in June 2021. In November 2022, 105 people went on trial before the Corte d'Assise of Santa Maria Capua Vetere, and torture was among the charges against nearly half of the prison officers.
History The prison stands on the Strada statale 7 bis, at kilometre 6.5. It has been active as a casa circondariale since 1996, and in October 2013 a new detention pavilion for 370 inmates was opened.
The prison is named after its first director, Francesco Uccella, a brigadier general who led the Santa Maria Capua Vetere prison complex from 1991 until his death in 2001. He had been officially recognised as a "victim of duty". The Department of Prison Administration approved the naming in 2013 at the request of the staff unions. The naming ceremony was held at the prison on 1 July 2013.
Six of the prison's wards are named after rivers: the Volturno, Nilo, Tamigi, Tevere, Senna and Danubio. The Nilo ward has eight sections and holds about 370 ordinary inmates. One of its sections is a 20-place unit for mental health care. The Senna ward holds women in the AS3 high-security category.
Water supply The prison was opened without a connection to the public water network. When the national ombudsman for the rights of prisoners visited it in December 2016, the water supply was suspended for several hours every day, including overnight from 10 pm to 7 am, and 227 of the 392 cells had no shower. Inmates received two litres of bottled water per person each day. The ombudsman estimated the cost of connecting the prison to the municipal aqueduct at €2 million, and reported that the local criminal bar association had questioned whether the situation was compatible with Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Until the connection the prison relied on water tanks and bottled water. In 2018 the municipality of Santa Maria Capua Vetere obtained €2 million for the works through the regional government of Campania, and running water reached the prison in December 2022, 26 years after it opened.
Violence of April 2020 On 5 April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, inmates of the Nilo ward protested over the lack of masks and tests after news spread of a positive case among the prisoners. The next day the ward was searched by the prison's own officers together with a support group of officers from other prisons in Campania. Surveillance footage showed officers armed with batons beating and kicking inmates, some of whom were bleeding or lying on the ground and offered no visible resistance. The preliminary investigations judge described inmates being made to strip and kneel before they were beaten. Some were forced to stand facing the wall for long periods or had their hair and beards shaved.
A 28-year-old Algerian inmate who had been placed in isolation immediately after the beatings was found dead on 4 May 2020 in the Danubio ward.
Investigation and trial On 28 June 2021 the preliminary investigations judge ordered 52 precautionary measures against prison police officers and officials, and more than 110 people were under investigation. The charges ranged from aggravated torture to forgery of public records and obstruction of the investigation. In the following days Domani published the surveillance footage. The justice minister, Marta Cartabia, called the events "an offense and an outrage to the dignity of prisoners" and "a betrayal of the Italian constitution". On 14 July 2021 Cartabia visited the prison with the prime minister, Mario Draghi, who said that "there can be no justice where there is abuse" and that collective responsibility lay with "a system that must be reformed".
On 12 July 2022 the preliminary hearing judge sent 105 people to trial, including prison police officers and officials of the prison administration. The trial opened on 7 November 2022 in the prison's bunker courtroom, before the Corte d'Assise of Santa Maria Capua Vetere. The case was heard by that court because of charges connected with the death of the Algerian inmate. By then four associations and 95 of the 177 inmates identified as injured parties had joined the proceedings as civil parties. Two officers who had chosen the abbreviated procedure were tried separately and acquitted, and in March 2026 the Naples Court of Appeal upheld the acquittal.
On 22 July 2026 the prosecutors asked for sentences totalling 766 years for 102 defendants. The heaviest request, 21 years and 4 months, concerned Pasquale Colucci, then commander of the prison police support group. According to the prosecution, nearly 300 inmates of the Nilo ward had been subjected to violence on 6 April 2020. As of September 2026 the first-instance trial was nearing its conclusion and no verdict had been delivered.
Population and conditions According to the Ministry of Justice, on 19 September 2026 the prison held 1,059 inmates, against an official capacity of 826 places, 159 of which were not available. At the end of August 2026 its staff included 467 officers of the prison police, out of 528 planned. At the time of the ombudsman's visit in December 2016 the prison held 945 inmates, 69 of them women, against 833 official places. During the visit of July 2021 the justice minister described overcrowding as the prison's most serious problem, with 905 inmates for 809 places.
The prison has a theatre and six libraries, along with two sports fields and five gyms. The administration runs two tailoring workshops, one employing seven women and the other 16 men.
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