Someone has to take the rap

Isn’t it amazing, or is it? Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Tonio Borg did a Fawlty Towers’ Manuel and claimed, “I know nothing” about the goings on in the prison when he was the minister responsible.

This followed a grave indictment issued by a judge sentencing a 40-year-old woman, described as ruling the roost at Corradino, to 12 years in jail and fined €23,000 after a jury found her guilty of having trafficked hard drugs in prison between 2006 and 2008.

Josette Bickle, who ran a drug business for two years selling heroin inside the prison unhampered also had access to a cell where she kept the goods bartered for drugs. The booty included four television sets, DVDs and a sound surround system, among other items.

The high number of visits allowed to Bickle as compared to the other prisoners, and her easy access to drugs could not but indicate collusion with the authorities. Therefore, “she should not shoulder the blame for what had happened alone,” said Mr Justice Michael Mallia.

That is, he expected someone in authority to take responsibility. “This was a system which had failed and was not correctional”, he said. Tonio Borg, who was Home Affairs Minister at the time, immediately did a Pontius Pilate and washed his hands of the shambles by saying he knew nothing about it, which does not say much of his running of such an important ministry.

We have had other happenings, which have warranted resignations from Cabinet ministers this year, but this is by far the most serious. To refer to the prison as a “hot potato” would be the understatement of the year.

Every minister handling that portfolio past and present has had more than their work cut out, but it is no excuse for allowing events to get completely out of hand and reach the stage where a drug lucrative business was being run unhindered at the prison.

The harsh condemnation by the courts pushed the former, long standing chairman of the Prison Board, Mario Felice, to announce that he had warned the minister then responsible Dr Borg and then prison director Sandro Gatt of the prison situation at that time.

He had repeatedly asked the prison authorities to adopt a comprehensive drug policy for Corradino Correctional Facility but the request was “consistently denied”, he said.
Telling Mr Gatt and Dr Borg that the prison needed a comprehensive drug policy was putting it mildly. Yet, the authorities insisted, “there was no significant drug problem”.

Maybe, what they meant was that there was no problem obtaining drugs in prison. “It had become the norm and it was easier to get drugs in prison rather than outside,” Dr Jason Grima, for the prosecution told the court. Except that, according to witnesses the price paid for them inside was highly inflated.

“What’s emerged in the past days is just a snapshot of some of the contradictions in the prison system, which I had warned about some years ago,” Dr Felice said on Friday. He had resigned as Prison Board chairman on Good Friday of 2008 when things came to a head with Sandro Gatt. By which time, Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici had been given the poisoned chalice − the Home Affairs portfolio.

Mr Gatt had placed Melchior Spiteri in a maximum-security cell where he tried to take his own life. He was then confined to Mount Carmel Hospital for 48 hours. When he returned to prison, he was placed in a cell that “was manifestly unsafe and posed risks, both to his health and his life,” Dr Felice had said. When the board issued its recommendations, these were ignored for 30 hours.

This also raises the question of responsibility of the doctors assigned to the prison. Did s/he also make recommendations to the authorities? Dr Felice had also declared that certain prison inmates received preferential treatment with the blessing of Mr Gatt. One prisoner, Leli “Il-Bully” Camilleri, was said to “run the show in prison”, with other inmates going through him to access certain prison facilities such as prison leave.

“It’s pointless having a board that observes things, yet powerless to do anything about it. I have given this a lot of consideration, but there comes a time where you’re either complicit, or you have to call a spade a spade and let the authorities face the reality of things and assume some responsibility for it,” he said. Dr Felice had come to the conclusion that he did not share the same values on life and health as the prison’s administration.

I was on the Prison Board in the mid nineties for a couple of years but refused to stay on because of the hopelessness of the situation. I am just surprised that it took so long to implode and that it took the then Board chairman, Mario Felice, so long to resign since things had got a lot worse.

This was not the first time Dr Felice had resigned his post. Earlier that year (2008), the entire board stepped down en bloc over the lack of dialogue with the prison’s management, which it felt inhibited its functions. However, they were persuaded to stay on.
Dr Felice’s comments led to Mr Gatt resigning as prison director and returning to the police force. The government set up an inquiry into prison maladministration in August of that year.

The inquiry recommendations were published in March 2009 and Minister Mifsud Bonnici had forwarded the findings of the board to the Attorney General and the Commissioner of Police for further criminal investigations. He declined to make the report public, saying that to do so would prejudice police investigations.

“Unfortunately, prisons are breeding grounds for bullying (sometimes violent), and drugs and both are treated with a blind eye by the authorities. It is not easy to find the right kind of people to man prisons and drugs keep inmates subdued.” I wrote in my column “What are prisons for?” of 8 January this year.

It was in response to a Dutch prison inmate’s letter to Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, copied to the press claiming, “I am ill-treated every single day”. Perry Ignomar Toornstra had alleged that prison did nothing to reform him, but instead turned him into a “chain-smoking, heroin addict who has developed a total understanding of how to commit, and even enjoy, heinous unthinkable crimes”.

I had opined that although that kind of statement would not have done him any favours, (which society wants that kind of person on its streets?) it should have been a wakeup call to those people who have no understanding of what badly run prisons do to people.

Mario Felice, inmates and a prison guard had corroborated Mr Toornstra’s claims, insisting that il-Bully “runs the show in prison”. So even though Sandro Gatt had been replaced by this time, things had not changed.

I am not surprised that the judge in the Bickel case concluded that there was something seriously wrong at the prison and that he expressed the hope that this kind of situation was not being tolerated in order to control the prisoners without increasing the warders.
It is not enough for the government to say things are now being done to improve the situation; someone has to take the rap.

published in the Malta Sunday Independent on 18 December 2011