“We are dying of heat here, but politics sleeps with air conditioning”. With these words, former Mayor of Rome Gianni Alemanno describes the extreme conditions experienced in the Rebibbia prison during the scorching heat wave of recent days. The passage is taken from a diary written by Alemanno in his cell, which was read publicly in the Chamber by Senator Michele Fina (PD) during the debate on constitutional reform for the separation of careers in the judiciary. Fina wanted to bring Parliament's attention to what he called “the real drama of Italian justice”: prison overcrowding and inhumane living conditions behind bars. “While we discuss reforms, outside this Chamber people are suffering in silence,” the senator stressed. In his writing, Alemanno - a former minister, former deputy and mayor of Rome - recounts how the temperature rises significantly on each floor of the penitentiary, reaching as much as 10 degrees higher on the top level than on the ground floor. A condition made even more difficult by the presence of too many inmates in small spaces, a mixture that turns days in prison into a real test of survival.