Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

Milan, with its three penitentiary institutions for adults and the Beccaria penal institution for minors, is the Italian city with the most extensive and complex criminal and penitentiary system in the country.

The penitentiary system for adults is divided into a "Francesco di Cataldo" prison (the historic prison of San Vittore), intended to host mainly people awaiting trial, coming from freedom or transferred to Milan for procedural reasons, and two prisons imprisonment (the Opera and Bollate Institutes which, despite their name, both fall within the territory of the Municipality of Milan), intended for the detention of people already convicted, for which the law prescribes treatment courses including work, training and cultural activities.

This penitentiary system is also made up of two female sections in San Vittore and Bollate, of the 41 bis section and some high security departments in Opera, of a protected department in San Vittore and of an advanced treatment department for the so-called "sex- offenders" in Bollate.

Furthermore, the advanced treatment department for drug-addicted prisoners in San Vittore, Bollate and Opera, the SAI (Intensified Assistance Service) of Opera, the clinical center of San Vittore, the hospital detention department at the ASST Santi Carlo hospital are active and Paolo and the San Vittore Neuro-Psychiatric Observation Center, for prisoners with mental health problems.

Finally, the Attenuated Custody Institute (ICAM) is active for detained mothers, located outside, but under the control of San Vittore (first structure of its kind in Italy, ed.).

The picture of the Milanese detention system is completed by the "Cesare Beccaria" penal institute for minors (IPM) and the adjacent structure intended as a first reception center for newly arrested children.

Overall, the Milanese metropolitan penitentiary system, to date (April 2023, ed.), has a capacity of approximately 3.000 places.