Fenech Adami wants justice for transgender prisoners, warns of prison’s drug woes

Home affairs minister Carmelo Abela says high rate of drug finds in prison the result of an increase in investigations, including on prison wardens

PN deputy leader Beppe Fenech Adami lambasted the prison's management and urged the government to allow transgender inmates to be transferred to the section of the prison facility that matches their gender identity.

Speaking in Parliament, Fenech Adami noted that seven transgender inmates have opened a constitutional case against the government for refusing to transfer them to the prison’s female section.

“These people are women, but they are being forced to live in the male section of the prison. They are suffering unjust humiliation because society hasn’t yet decided to tackle the issue as we should.

“I urge the home affairs minister [Carmelo Abela] not to await the court outcome but to create guidelines to stop them from suffering needlessly.”

Abela retorted that the government issued a directive for prisoners to be transferred to wards that reflect their legal gender identity.

“This is rich. Trans-prisoners have been suffering for several years and nothing was ever done about them in the past. Now the government has introduced a gender identity law and we are getting criticised [by the PN] for not doing enough.”

In his speech, the PN deputy leader read out a letter from a prisoner, who complained about water supply problems, drug problems, lack of hygiene and poor quality food offered to prisons.

“Division 1 has been without water supply for the past three weeks and inmates have to wash themselves with freezing water from a water wipe. The flushing doesn’t work either,” he read out.

The anonymous prisoner also warned that drugs are easier to obtain inside prison walls than outside it, which Fenech Adami said put shame to Labour’s pre-electoral pledge to eradicate the prison’s drug problem for good.

“A few months after the election, the government hired a former US soldier to make Corradino free of drugs. With full responsibility, I can say that the government has failed big time in this sector, and that drugs can be obtained extremely easily from inside prison.”

Insisting that he wasn’t being “alarmist”, he warned that drugs are located in prison ever two weeks, a rate that is worrying prisoners’ relatives.

He urged home affairs minister Carmelo Abela not to pin the blame on the previous Nationalist administration, who he admitted had its faults in the sector.

“The previous administration wasn’t perfect but you cannot keep blaming it for everything after three years in government,” he said.

The prisoner quoted by Fenech Adami also complained about the food offered to inmates, which he said was at the “lowest level”.

“We get tuna in the evening that would have been prepared in the morning, along with sour tomatoes and badly cooked chicken spilling with blood,” he said. “The prison authorities would be advised in advance when the central authorities plan an inspection, so they’d have time to clean up. However, the truth is that the hygiene level in the prison kitchen is disastrous.”

Fenech Adami also urged the government to allow transgender inmates to be transferred to the prison facility that matches their gender identity.

In a brief response, Carmelo Abela said that more drugs are being found because more inspections are being carried out, both on prisoners and wardens.

He denied that water supply was cut off for days at a stretch and that prisoners were being offered poor quality food. Indeed, he said that the quality of the food has gone up a notch since 2013.