After years of delay, Italy finally has an institutional figure dedicated to the monitoring of prisoners' rights. Mauro Palma, the founder and first president of Associazione Antigone and the former president of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Chair of the Council for Penological Co-operation, has been appointed Italy's first national ombudsman. Antigone's current president, Patrizio Gonnella, saluted the new ombudsman: "He will surely play a key role in elevating standards and guarantees accorded to all those who are deprived of their liberty, not only in prisons."