Young detainees at Milan's Cesare Beccaria Juvenile Penal Institute have undergone ill-treatment and, in some cases, open torture. With these allegations, thirteen Penitentiary Police officers were sent to pre-trial incarceration in jail, while eight additional police officers were suspended from performing public duties. Maltreatment, complicity in torture, and attempted sexual assault against a detainee are the offenses against which the Public Prosecutor's Office has lodged charges. In his preliminary ruling, the judge stated that the "violence perpetrated in the prison corresponds exactly to a repeated and systematic practice that characterizes the ordinary conduct of the agents who want to establish the rules of civil coexistence and impose them by beating, assaulting and offending the detained minors". Thus, a "consolidated system" has produced "a hellish climate" for youth, according to the magistrate.
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