The country’s highest court has ruled that prisoners in prisons in Italy should be allowed to have sex with visitors who visit them.
Accordingly, Italy’s Constitutional Court said that a prisoner’s right to have sex with his or her spouse should only be denied for security or order and discipline reasons, or for the risk of danger to the prisoner or for judicial reasons.
Accordingly, human rights activists are demanding that officials create love rooms in prisons for their greater comfort, and the court ruling is said to have strengthened the demands.
The court ruling granting prisoners the right to have sex came after an inmate in a prison in the northern Italian city of Asti was denied the right to have sex with his wife.
The court ruled in the case that “the freedom to enjoy emotional relationships is a constitutionally protected right.”
The 34-year-old prisoner, identified only as A.S., took his case to Italy’s highest court after a local court in Turin rejected his previous request for a marriage license.
The details of the crime and sentence that led to the prisoner’s imprisonment have not been disclosed.
Following the Constitutional Court’s ruling in the inmate’s favor, prisoners’ rights group Hands Off Cain is calling on the government to establish “Stance dell’Amore” (love rooms).
The incidents come as Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government is carrying out a sweeping prison reform in Italy.
