The DUNDRUM ToolKit, Italian version and its potenzial use in the italian forensic treatment model

Abstract

The legislative process that led to the closure of the Judicial Psychiatric Hospitals (OPG), replaced by the
Residences for the Execution of Security Measures (REMS), constituted a significant step forward towards
the establishment of a community model of care of offenders with severe socially dangerous mental disorders
more respectful of human rights. Among the main criticalities that had been identified in the previous forensic
psychiatric treatment system, based on OPGs, were considered the overcrowding, the problematic hygienic-sanitary conditions, the inexistence of treatment programs that were adequate to the levels of social danger that changed over time, the non-therapeutic-rehabilitative nature of the internment in OPG, the
“anti-therapeutic” presence of the Penitentiary Police personnel, the hypothetically unlimited duration of
the internment. The new model has certainly remedied these critical issues, but other issues have arisen that
need to be worked on. The authors report here the first data of a multicenter research project that developed
on the national territory during the years 2021 and 2022 aimed at validating the DUNDRUM Toolkit, a tool
for evaluating the effectiveness of forensic treatment and recovery, in validation course also in other European
countries, particularly adaptable to the treatment model that has been developing in Italy with the establishment of REMS.