Today, the Xarabank television show will be discussing a most controversial subject – prison.

I say controversial because some call it a place of reform, others call it a place of detention, while others describe it as the “best” place in the world for criminals.

I feel that for someone like me who has been in and out during visiting hours, I must put the record straight. In my lifetime I have never met such decent, honourable sticklers for justice and warm-hearted people as the staff in prison.

They are not disinterested when listening to tales of woe. Especially in the women’s section, they are patient with those who committed one or two peccadilloes as well as those who committed major crimes.

As to prison in general and its staff, I hasten to remind the public that there are rotten apples besides good ones everywhere. There are rotten apples in church, in schools, in hospitals etc. Bad attitudes from people exist everywhere and prison is not an exception.

What is unfair is generalising. If a priest is a paedophile, it doesn’t mean all priests are. If a lawyer was caught breaking the law, it doesn’t mean all lawyers are partial to breaking the law. The list goes on…

I would not put all criminals in the same category. Those who have killed are not the same as those who have stolen. Those who have being involved in drug trafficking are not the same as those who have become victims of drug abuse. Those who have defiled young children are not the same as those who have been placed in prison for fraud.

I find it unjust when a hardened criminal is placed exactly near someone who has committed petty crimes. It is precisely like putting a monkey near a venomous snake. Chances are the vulnerable monkey will get to taste the snake’s poison sooner or later and since prison is a hundred per cent place of detention and not reform, what kind of reform is the thief going to get from a murderer?

There are various reasons why criminals should not be shoved all together like a sack of potatoes, and weak characters who are overcome by wicked, evil minds is one of them.

Back to apples again, a bad one can ruin the others but no good apples have ever managed to set the bad one right.

About drug addicts, have we made up our minds yet whether a criminal becomes a drug addict or if it is the other way round? I, for one, consider a drug addict to be afflicted by an illness; therefore is prison the best place for him to be?

Between 2000 and 2006 no fewer than 757 people have been arraigned in court and charged with drug trafficking. I would hate to think of the amount of youngsters they sold their drugs to. While keeping in mind that a trafficker who uses drugs and sells them is ill himself, I don’t pity the drug traffickers who, with no habit of using drugs, simply sell them.

Their victims are another matter…

Valerie Borg

Valletta