The Corradino Correctional Facility has claimed another life. Another family has been destroyed, joining the other eleven families of the inmates who died in prison over the past three years.
Once again, all we have is a measly press release with scant details, and no real form of action or promise that this obvious problem is going to be addressed.
The latest victim of our prison system was a 29-year-old woman who struggled with drug dependency. She was in not for murder or armed robbery, but for fraud, a crime that was probably fuelled by her drug addiction.
The young woman died in hospital less than three weeks after she attempted to take her own life behind bars.
According to reports, the woman had wanted to start a rehabilitation programme but was barred from doing so by existing rules. Prisoners can only apply to take part in a drug rehab programme after spending a minimum of six months of their sentence.
While the prison authorities do provide methadone and say that the prisoners are monitored by experts, the fact remains that they cannot access drug rehab services sooner.
The six-month rule has been criticised by the directors of Caritas and Fondazzjoni mid-Dlam ghad-Dawl, who say that the rules should be more flexible, and that rehab should be offered at an earlier stage, particularly to prisoners who are vulnerable and who are serving short sentences.
What this latest case continues to show is that the prison, while having an important role in keeping dangerous individuals away from society, can become a death sentence for many others who are not hardened criminals and who might be going through difficult phases.
Prison time can greatly disturb the physical and mental health of all individuals, let alone those who already suffer from some mental health condition or are victims of drug addiction.
Perhaps Magistrate Joe Mifsud was partly right when he decided against jailing the two architects who were found responsible for the death of Miriam Pace last year. The magistrate noted in his sentence that some people can actually turn bad while inside prison, and that placing certain individuals there is neither beneficial to them nor to society.
Add a prison director with a tyrannical streak to the mixture and the situation only gets worse.
This latest death – the twelfth one in the span of three years – does not reflect well on the leadership of Colonel Alexander Dalli, who prides himself on being a harsh disciplinarian and who has been facing calls for resignation practically ever since he was appointed to the post.
Over the past couple of years, several horror stories have emerged from the prison, including the use of the infamous ‘punishment’ chair. It is clear that Dalli’s military methods have no place in a place that is supposedly meant to reform people so that they can safely re-join society.
To make matters even worse, the conclusions of the inquiries into these twelve deaths remain shrouded in mystery.
Attorney General Victoria Buttigieg has ruled out making the contents public, saying that the reports are of a highly confidential nature.
We are not expecting that the AG publishes the entire reports, with all the grisly details, but we believe that the public has a right to know what’s going on behind the prison walls. If the system is flawed, we deserve to know about it. We also deserve to know what’s being done about it, if anything is being done, that is.
The government and the prison authorities need to be more transparent about all these deaths. If they were natural causes, we should be told. If they were not, there is even more reason why we should know.
At the end of the day, the people spending time behind bars are people like us. They could be family, for some of us. We pride ourselves in being a society that cares about everyone, even about those who make mistakes and pay for it in prison, and we demand to know that everything is being done to give these people the best possible hope of rehabilitation into society, that every effort is being made to provide for their care, and that they are not living in a repressive and hostile environment that will only make them become worse individuals.
While we acknowledge that every country in the world has prisons, that for some individuals there is simply no other option, these institutions should be places of reformation and healing, not of oppression and depression.
Many countries around the world have shifted towards innovative systems where prisoners truly reform, and this is shown in their low recidivism rates.
In our case, it seems that we are moving in the opposite direction.