The snap visit by the new Minister for Home Affairs and National Security to the Corradino Correctional Facility, when he discovered that a number of warders who were meant to have been on duty at the prison had instead gone home, has led to the resignation of the prison director and the setting up of a board of inquiry. The board will be examining both the incident of the absconding prison guards and the structures and shortcomings of the present system. A can of worms is inevitably being opened up.
Another board of inquiry reported in 2009 following a spate of incidents, which had come to public knowledge through the media the previous year. The board had expressed serious concern at the poor management, leadership and organisation of the Correctional Facility at all levels and in all areas of responsibility. It described a facility that was badly run, poorly led, demoralised and dysfunctional in virtually every aspect of its organisation and management.
Most of the deficiencies stemmed from a failure of leadership. Although there was an organisational chart, it was clear that this was not being followed. Moreover, the chart itself failed to include the ‘chain of command’ over the prison Divisional Wings, thus omitting the vital front-line of the organisation which is its raison d’être.
Management was highly arbitrary. There was no coordination or liaison between different parts of the organisation. Teamwork was factional and disjointed. Individual officers were unaware both of what they were supposed to be doing, or what others were doing. Responsibility and accountability were diffuse.
The Correctional Facility had a ‘Statement of Purpose’ which it published in its Annual Departmental Report: “The Corradino Correctional Facility serves the public by keeping in custody those committed by the Law Courts. Our duty is to look after prisoners with humanity and help them lead law-abiding and useful lives while in custody and after release”.
As a statement, it is admirable. But in 2008-2009, the Board found it bore no resemblance to what was actually being done within the prison. The emphasis was very much on custody. But helping prisoners to lead law-abiding and useful lives ‘while in custody and after release’ was lacking. Preparation for education, rehabilitation and eventual re-settlement into civil society was absent.
The Board found that the quality and training of the overwhelming majority of staff was poor. Training of staff, both prior to entry and in-house, was deficient. The combination of relatively poor, badly trained and demoralised staff and a management and leadership ethos that was uncoordinated and de-motivated inevitably led to low performance and ineffectiveness.
The presence of a significant core of police officers in critical positions within the Correctional Facility caught the Board’s attention. Police officers, the Board felt, were ill suited by their background, temperament and training to the complex management of a prison. Few other prison services in Europe are run by police officers.
While there are some 24 police officers in the Correctional Facility, who fill some very important posts in the hierarchy of the prison, they constitute in numerical terms only a small proportion of the total complement of the prison. The vast majority are Correctional Officers. With top posts in the Facility from the director downwards filled by police officers, the influence of the police corps is all-pervading. But there was also little doubt in the Board's judgment that the police presence in the prison in its present configuration – with its overwhelming number of semi-trained staff and in its current dysfunctional state – added value in disciplinary and reliability terms. Without them, the problems would probably have been worse.
The long-term objective should be to try to prepare Senior Correctional Officers – both in their initial selection and in their subsequent training – to fill all the posts in the prison, including the director’s post. In the short term, the police officers must form a part of the overall team, not an ‘elite’ element within it. But the long-term objective should be to remove police from involvement in prison where they do not properly belong.
The Board felt that the morale and discipline of the Correctional Facility left much to be desired. The lack of teamwork was endemic and a direct reflection of poor morale. The organisation was not a cohesive, disciplined force, but made up of a number of individuals. It was also clear that at all levels of the Facility individuals were (and probably still are) operating under considerable stress.
The Board found that the prison was riddled with a drug culture that was extremely disturbing. Controlling and curbing drugs in prison is a matter of determined leadership, which starts with a policy of zero tolerance to drugs. But such a policy must be under-pinned by organisational improvements to the way the battle against drugs within the prison is conducted. There must be a well-manned single entry point, led by somebody with absolute authority to search for and stop drugs from entering the prison. The staff should be assisted in this task by modern drug-detection equipment.
Corradino Correctional Facility has grown rapidly in the last few years. A decade ago there were about 250 prisoners. Today it houses over 600 prisoners, and is spread over a larger physical area than before. Yet its manpower establishment, designed for a smaller prison, has remained unchanged at around 200 correctional staff and police officers. It is thought that to reflect the prison’s new tasks and commitments a staff complement of some 260 to 280 may be required. A full operational review of the organisation and manpower establishment is urgently needed.
What is the solution? Preliminary briefing from the Ministry of Home Affairs and National Security indicates that the minister may be contemplating splitting the command structure of the prison in two. One director would assume responsibility for operations – essentially, custody, security and discipline – while the second would run the correctional, reform and rehabilitation aspects of the prison. The argument put forward in favour of such an arrangement is that combining the necessary expertise of custody and reform imposes too wide and onerous a responsibility on one man. There is a serious risk, however, that dividing responsibility as is being proposed may lead to a lack of clear accountability and a confused chain of command which would make matters worse, not better.
More importantly, however, the problems at the Corradino Correctional Facility are more deep-seated than just how the organisation is structured. The prison is seriously short of manpower for the job it has been given to perform. The limited manpower is itself badly trained and under-resourced. Over many years, poor leadership has undermined the whole ethos and culture of the prison.
There are no quick or easy solutions. Solutions will have to lie in a much more multi-faceted approach, embracing the prison structure, as well as additional manpower resources, a comprehensive regime of re-training of all correctional and police officers to achieve higher professional standards and the purchase of modern drug control equipment. The transformation of Corradino into a proper Correctional Facility is likely to take several years and will require a huge investment of political will.