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Karl Schembri
The chilly air inside the Corradino Correctional Facility’s massive halls does not distinguish between the inmates and the wardens working here. Nor is there anything Christmassy between the dreadful walls of the Victorian prison, where 300 inmates incarcerated for crimes ranging from petty thefts to the most serious of offences spend every minute of their sentence.
It is one of those places where you sigh with relief upon hearing the main gate close behind you as you return to the free world, although many inmates face their day of release with trepidation after years of confinement and exclusion from society. And for some of them, that moment will never arrive as their life sentence means they will only get out in a coffin, just like those condemned to death in the old days.
About a month ago, most of them were full of hope that the Prime Minister would announce an amnesty during the Queen’s visit for CHOGM. But amnesties are a forgotten practice among all those living outside the prison gates, and they are also a political taboo.
“It’s impossible to live knowing that I will never get out of here alive,” says a prisoner sentenced to life for complicity in murder committed years ago.
The scars on his wrist are witness to his repeated suicide attempts – a normal business inside this prison that, if lucky, often ends up with a rush to Mount Carmel Hospital and a couple of hours of psychiatric attention.
It’s the ultimate indictment of the “correctional” system. Meant to rehabilitate the dangerous individuals, it tacitly admits through life imprisonment that some ‘cases’ are beyond its reach, sugaring it with a morally convenient ‘humane’ alternative to the death penalty.
“I’m already dead as far as I’m concerned,” the inmate says. “There’s no hope for me.”
Earlier this year, an Arab prisoner sentenced for life who had somehow smuggled in a pistol tried to shoot himself in the head in an attempt that was foiled on the nick of time by another inmate.
The worst of all divisions is nr 6, the bare, maximum security wing where those considered to be a serious threat are kept in isolation.
“It’s freezing in our division,” a prisoner currently kept there since last July’s riots says.
Even the guards complain about the unbearable cold there.
Most of the inmates are full of praise for the relatively new prison director, Police Inspector Sandro Gatt, whose contract expires next year. They appreciate his compassion and down to earth approach to them, and it is to him that they addressed a letter last month calling for a meeting with Parliamentary Secretary Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, as junior home affairs minister, in a bid to discuss some proposals they have that would make their life a bit easier.
Yet they also claim that a ring of subordinates to the director are extremely arbitrary, and therefore unjust, in their application of prison rules, and that they often undermine his authority through their discretionary powers.
High among their requests is that of increasing gradually the amount of home leave the closer one draws to the termination of his or her sentence, and to be granted work leave and study leave after a fixed percentage of a sentence has been served, rather than in the last two years as currently granted – measures that would help them immensely to reintegrate once they are released.
Another request is to cap life and lengthy sentences to a definite period, as is the case in several jurisdictions abroad. Several foreign inmates, even from EU countries, currently cannot be repatriated as they are serving terms that exceed the maximum sentences in their countries.
Even the mundane in prison can be maddening. The tuck shop, for example, is in the hands of one correctional officer who has been running it for years. He hands a form to prisoners twice a week with a list of all available goods – all considerably overpriced.
And for a prison that claims to be a correctional facility, the poor education unit comprising four classrooms there belies the name of the institution. Although the curriculum is relatively vast, including basic literacy and numeracy, O and A level courses and non-academic classes in chess, pottery and art, it used to offer a wider curriculum that included drama, music and lateral thinking. To its credit, the school did give some unprecedented opportunities to some individuals who, after doing their exams, were admitted to university to study there for the first time in their life, but such cases are still too few.
One area of criticism beyond the reach of the prison director, and the minister, regards the actual sentences coming from law courts. In some cases, Maltese drug traffickers get privileged treatment through unexplainable court bans and protection. In others, the judges come down like a ton of bricks with life sentences, particularly where Arabs are concerned.
To the victims of crime it must be of little consolation to know that the perpetrators are rotting in jail. If justice is a dehumanisation of the human being, what hope lies in the future of those who are meant to return to society as “reformed” individuals? It may appease the conscience of the few, but it can hardly be called justice.
kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt
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