Alternative penalties for drug offenders (3)

(ANSA) - Rome, March 14 - Justice Minister Andrea Orlando said Tuesday the government was working to "incentivise the use of alternative penalties to jail for drug addicts," after the Council of Europe put Italy top of its 47 members for the proportion of drug offenders in prison. "We have to think whether prison is the best solution to fight the drug phenomenon," Orlando said. Italy was the country with the highest proportion of prisoners in jail for drug offences in 2015, according to the Council of Europe's SPACE study, which was released on Tuesday. It said almost a third of inmates, 31.1%, who had been handed definitive sentences were in jail for drugs crimes. The data in the annual report photographed the situation in 2015 in the Council of Europe's 47 member countries up to September 1 of that year.