Forced to live in squalor

A group of almost 50 inmates at Corradino prison, all of them foreign, have written an open letter complaining of systematic human rights violations at Malta’s only ‘correctional facility’.

Claims range from bullying and intimidation, to unhygienic and inhumane living conditions, to prolonged exposure to serious health risks; to a deeply ingrained prejudice against foreigners in Malta’s judicial system, among others.

MaltaToday is in a position to confirm many of the claims concerning at last the material conditions of detention in prison, and is currently looking into the rest.

In their written plea for “immediate help”, the 49 inmates – all of whom have signed their full names, and list out the crimes for which they were convicted (nearly all drug trafficking offences) – describe the 200-year-old prison building as “depleted and dirty”, and “infested with cockroaches and flies when the weather gets warmer.”

There are no heating facilities of any kind in any part of the prison, and upon admission inmates are given only two used white bed-sheets, a used light wool blanket, a pillow and pillow-case, both used.

With night-time temperatures recently dropping to below 6 degrees Celsius, the inmates describe the situation as “torture in every sense of the word”.

Other complaints include the fact that no clothing or footwear of any kind is provided, with foreigners forced to rely exclusively on charity for their most basic needs.

“Natives [sic] get their clothes brought to prison from home by their family. Once in a while, we non-natives are supplied with used ill-fitting and wrong-weather clothes from the Red Cross.”

There is no form of laundry service of any kind either, exposing residents to the risk of hygiene-related diseases. Inmates also claim they are forced to “buy almost everything from drinking water to shower gel” from the prison itself.

“Poor non-Maltese inmates who have no access to money from outside are desperate and helpless.”

Given that there is no other option to procure basic commodities essential for survival, the situation can easily be interpreted as institutionalized extortion.

A recipe for ill-health

Turning to the medical services, the letter paints a dire picture of prison as posing constant and unavoidable health risks to all residents.

Inmates claim they are actively discouraged from seeking medical assistance: “We are practically punished when requesting to see the prison doctor: an inmate is locked up for up to six hours during the day before seeing the prison doctor in the evening.”

Insufficient access to medical services was in fact one of the problems highlighted by a report of the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Degrading Treatment (CPT), which visited the prison in 2005 and 2008, and which has requested a full audit of the facility.

And while the rest of Malta boasts of its anti-smoking policies – having been among the first in Europe to ban smoking from bars, restaurants, government departments and all public places – there is still no such thing as a smoke-free zone in prison.

“Non smokers are constantly subject to second hand smoke,” the letter points out.

“From the medical room in CCF to the court holding cells in Valletta, it is never-ending pollution with passive smoking. Those inmates who have medical conditions are suffering with no end in sight.”

There have been three deaths in prison over the last 10 months alone. At least one of these fatalities – that of Saviour Gauci in 2010 - was due to lung cancer.

Checking the claims

MaltaToday has sought to verify some of the main claims in this letter, which if true would implicate the prison management and Home Affairs Ministry in an ongoing series of human rights violations. From a preliminary investigation nearly all their claims appear to be well-founded in fact. None can be dismissed as an outright lie, though for practical reasons (most of the prison’s divisions are off-limits, even to prisoners’ rights charities such as Mid-Dlam Ghad Dawl) some cannot be confirmed with any certainty.

Claim: No heating

Veracity: Fully confirmed

Admittedly, some of the individual claims in the letter may be exaggerated. Winter temperatures are not “well below freezing”, as claimed… though they do occasionally drop below 6 degrees Celsius, and are exacerbated by humidity.

But MaltaToday can amply confirm that there is no heating in any part of Corradino Prison, except for isolated areas such as the medical ward and the guardroom. Acting prison director Abram Zammit confirmed this himself last February: “Inmates are not allowed to have heaters in their cells, for safety and security reasons,” he said. “You will find that this is the accepted system in prisons all over the world.”

However, this latter claim does not stand up to scrutiny at all. Prisons around the world have central heating systems, without which (in many cases) inmates would be at risk of death due to hypothermia.

Status: Human rights abuse

Together with unhygienic conditions (see below) forcing inmates to live in poorly heated conditions is a recognized human rights violation.

With specific reference to mental health institutions (not prisons), the World Health Organisation defines as a violation any institute that forces people to “live in filthy living conditions, lacking clothes, clean water, food, heating, proper bedding or hygiene facilities.”

Claim: Unhygienic living conditions

Veracity: Partially confirmed

Family-members of Maltese inmates currently serving sentences in Corradino have corroborated claims that there are no facilities to wash clothes in any part of the prison. For locals, laundry is carried out at home. Foreign inmates have no such luxury, and are left to their own devices to ‘improvise’.

That hygienic conditions are substandard in other ways is also amply borne out by the 2008 CPT report. There is also a ruling by the Constitutional Court, which found that prison conditions (limited to Division Six) had violated convict Meinrad Calleja’s basic human rights.

Vermin infestation is also verbally confirmed by families of inmates, and has been raised in another pending Constitutional case against the prison authorities, this time by British national Steve Marsden.

The extent of the problem is however unclear, as many of the Divisions are inaccessible even to humanitarian NGOs.

Status:Health hazard, human rights violation

Dr Julian Mamo, a public health specialist, confirms that such conditions – if proven – may cause potentially life-threatening conditions/diseases.

“Diseases such as tuberculosis (TB) obviously thrive in overcrowded, unhygienic conditions. As TB was measured to be considerably higher in illegal migrants to Malta, some of whom may have been imprisoned, it poses the possibility of a deterioration and even a spread of this disease: once rampant in Maltese society. That had been generally overcome by better housing and hygiene (rather than by the advent of antibiotics).”

“There is no question that pest infestations can cause the spread of infection. Typhus, leishmaniasis and scabies are but a few of them,”

The WHO (see above), also clearly defines such living conditions as violating basic human rights.

Claim: Passive smoking

Veracity: Partially confirmed

Again it is difficult to verify this for all parts of the prison, but all former inmates who spoke to MaltaToday have separately corroborated the claim that smoke-free zones do not exist anywhere in the facility.

Status: Health hazard, legal infringement

Dr Mamo stresses that passive smoking “is now scientifically proven to be truly harmful to health in terms of lung cancer and heart disease.  It can also increase the risk of chest infections. The EU has recognized the scientific basis of passive smoking and has urged its member states to legislate forbidding smoking in public places just for this reason.  Once again, it is all a question of the amount of exposure so that one hour daily being exposed to others in the dining area is one thing but living 24 hours a day in the same cell as a chain smoker is something else and clearly harmful.”

On a legal level,Article 3(1) of the Smoking in Public Places Regulations states that “No person shall smoke any tobacco product in any enclosed area.”

An “enclosed area” means “any space covered by a roof and enclosed by more than one wall or side, regardless of the material used for the roof, wall or sides, and regardless of whether the structure is permanent or not.”

Prison further counts as a government building, in which smoking is supposedly strictly prohibited.

There are no exceptions written into this law for prison facilities, and it is unclear why this blatant ongoing legal violation is tolerated by the authorities, when bar- and restaurant owners are regularly fined for the same offence.