‘Institutional reform’ is about prison, too

I can’t believe it’s already been 10 years.... but 10 years ago I wrote an article in this newspaper entitled ‘Grim reality of Victorian prison conditions’. It centred on allegations made at the time by an inmate who has since been released.

I won’t bore you with the details, but they mostly concerned human rights/health and safety issues: among them, a rat infestation in Division Six (maximum security, also where the isolation cells are located); inhumane housing conditions (insufficient heating, poor access to healthcare, regular outbreaks of scabies, etc); unreported suicides and suicide attempts... stuff like that. 

There was also an alleged beating by prison warders, and a separate allegation that the incident had been covered up by the prison authorities. It was on account of this latter aspect that I was subsequently sued by the former prison director and (individually) by five prison warders. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I won the case: which, indirectly, also implies that law-courts confirmed the main thrust of the article. 

The prison conditions at Kordin are indeed woefully substandard... and this was now attested and confirmed by a court ruling.

Not, mind you, that it marked the first occasion of an official, public acknowledgement of this problem. There have been numerous cases of inmates suing the government over prison conditions, and some of them even ended up in the European Court of Human Rights. One can almost talk of an entire body of local and international case law that confirms how appallingly third world our country is, when it comes to administering its criminal punitive justice system.

But has anything really changed at Malta’s only prison since I wrote that article 10 years ago (under a different government, etc)? Doesn’t look like it. In recent months, there have been numerous articles about former accountant Patrick Spiteri, who was being held at Kordin under preventive arrest for fraud until granted bail earlier this week. 

Before proceeding any further, I must admit that I know very little (and am not really interested in) the actual case against Spiteri per se.  I have no opinion about whether he should have been granted bail or not – a lot of people out there seem to think he shouldn’t – still less whether he is innocent or guilty of the charges brought against him.

My only interest is the repetition of the pattern I just outlined for you. Law courts rule that prison conditions are intolerably backward... and nothing happens as a result.

From this perspective, only one aspect of Spiteri’s detention concerns this article directly. He suffers from a health condition, which he successfully argued in court was being exacerbated by the squalor in which he was forcibly detained. 

That detail goes well beyond the case in question. Spiteri is hardly the only person in the world who suffers from some form of chronic, allergic or debilitating ailment. For all we know, Kordin might be full of other analogous cases: and if existing prison conditions are deemed incompatible with basic health and safety requirements in Spiteri’s case... who knows how many others are affected by similar issues?

Not to mention all the other cases who have no such ailments at all, but whose health deteriorates rapidly once behind bars: either due to the poor living conditions – there have been any number of scabies outbreaks, for instance - or because of limited access to healthcare. (I myself know of one case where an inmate lost an eye due to an undetected case of shingles.)

But back to Spiteri’s case. His condition, it seems, is particularly aggravated by close proximity to smoking...  something which, apparently, can’t be avoided in any of the regular divisions. So the law-courts eventually assented to a plea by his lawyers to transfer him to another division, as far away from cigarette smoke as possible.

Prison conditions at Kordin are woefully substandard and this was attested by a court ruling

It turned out that the only part of the prison that actually fit the description was an isolation cell in Division Six... which, if the rat-infestation allegations are true, is also a murine typhus outbreak waiting to happen. Not to mention that it is also a maximum security block, and as such very clearly not designed to accommodate people with special health needs (or indeed anyone who is not a ‘maximum security threat’). 

But no matter: all other parts of the prison, it seems, are permanently engulfed in a cloud of cigarette smoke. Even though there is a law against smoking in any of Malta’s public buildings...

Already there are so many things wrong with that, that I scarcely know where to begin. Let’s start with the basics. Are we to understand that the entire Kordin prison complex is the only part of Malta where the smoking ban (introduced in 2004, please note) simply cannot be enforced? If so, the irony would be staggering. Prison is a place you get sent to for breaking the law. Yet it is also a place where at least one law can be broken with complete impunity (even, according to Spiteri’s allegation, by prison officials themselves.)

At the same time, however, we also have to be realistic: unlike people on the outside, prison inmates cannot simply ‘go out for a smoke’ any time they like. It’s a prison, after all, not a restaurant. And the indoor smoking ban itself allows for exceptions.

But still: is it even conceivable, that in the almost 140 years since that building has been used as a prison... no one ever hit on the idea of dividing the blocks into ‘smoking’ and ‘non-smoking’ sections? That any non-smoker sentenced to jail-time in Malta – whether or not he or she suffers from any ailments – must serve out the entire sentence exposed, day and night, to a world-acknowledged health risk?

Looks like the only answer is ‘yes’... unless they want to do their time in isolation. And by an interesting coincidence, the last time a prison death made headlines in Malta, it was precisely the case of a man who died of lung cancer. (Note: The reason it made the news was because he had asked for a Presidential pardon, on compassionate grounds, months before his death. Little did he know that, in compassionate Malta, ‘Presidential pardons’ are only ever given to crooks who know stuff that might one day embarrass the government...)

But that was just a small digression. I mention this case only because it raises serious questions about whether our national prison is also a death-trap. I don’t normally write about things like ‘passive smoking’... because, normally, the complaints tend to come from people who can just as easily shove off to any smoke-free zone they like. I would, however, have an ENORMOUS issue with it, if I were confined to a place where there was no means of escaping the inhalation of second-hand smoke... ever.

Leaving aside the sheer primitiveness of the set-up in itself, there are legal/culpability issues at stake. Any non-smoking inmate (or his surviving relatives) who contracts cancer while in jail would surely be entitled to sue the government. I somehow doubt there is a single legal jurisdiction, anywhere in the civilised world, where a case like that would be lost.

And that’s just the passive smoking issue. Earlier I mentioned scabies. It might not be the most life-threatening condition known to man... but it is disgusting, highly contagious, and caused primarily by lack of hygiene. Now: under normal circumstances, I would argue that ‘personal hygiene’ is entirely up to the individual concerned. It is, after all, everyone’s responsibility to see to it that basic hygiene standards are kept... if not, they deserve whatever mite- or flea-inflicted rash they contract. 

But not when the unhygienic conditions are imposed upon that individual... not when, as with cigarette smoke, there is simply no way to avoid living in squalor and filth. Under those circumstances, the responsibility very clearly rests with the government which owns and administers the facility concerned. Everyone would see that instantly, if it were a school or an orphanage we were talking about here. Strangely, however, it seems to become automatically invisible the moment you mention the word ‘prison’.

That, I greatly suspect, has a lot to do with the lack of any immediate political goal that can be achieved by publicising prison-related issues (or at least, none that can be laid directly at the door of only one political party).

It is also partly down to another vaguely Victorian attitude of ours: our tendency to be reductive and simplistic when it comes to discussing crime and punishment. The ‘bread and water’ mentality is still very rife in Malta... especially among people who otherwise flock to public protests about ‘good governance’, ‘institutional reform’ and ‘the rule of law’.

Well, the situation in Kordin prison is also part of the broader institutional infrastructure that urgently needs reform... more urgently than all the others combined, in fact.  There may not be any political scalps to be claimed as trophies in the process... but if the intention behind this reform drive is really to upgrade our national infrastructure to 21st century standards: it should start with prison, where the deficiencies are BY FAR the most glaring.

Oh, and by the way: the date inscribed above the prison gate is ‘1866’. I may be a lone voice in thinking this... but that it also refers to Malta’s prison conditions, in 2017, is an indictment of us all.