In an interesting study entitled ‘Intergenerational Continuity in Offending’, criminologist Janice Formosa Pace painstakingly examined the crime history of a group of prisoners at Corradino Correctional Facility who were serving time there between 1950 and 2010.
It was an exercise covering 622 family trees which, in some cases, spanned five generations. Both restricted and extended family ties were examined. These ranged from parents to siblings and cousins, half-siblings and even step-siblings who were all, at some point, behind bars.
One in three inmates belonged to a family with criminal convictions. Many had a sibling, parent or spouse who had previously been in jail.
In a trend that differed markedly from the situation abroad, Dr Formosa Pace identified the partners-in-crime phenomenon among parents and children, with many Maltese criminal parents tending to work closely with their children in committing crime together.
The study brings a new meaning to Malta’s long-standing strength in setting up successful family businesses.
The main trends identified by the study are fourfold.
First, the top three most common relationships were those of siblings, followed by father-son and spouses. Second, “crime families” are generally made up of repeat offenders specialising in crimes that involve planning and organisation. The larger the number of family members in gaol, the higher the risk of offending and the more serious the crime. Third, for many, criminal activity was their main source of income and they were “economically inactive”. Fourth, there was a close similarity between the crimes carried out by parents and their children.
The report demonstrated it was common in Malta to have parents and their children as partners in the same crime. Abroad, such instances are rare. “This indicates,” Dr Formosa Pace noted, “we have certain factors in our culture, such as proximity and insularity, that make it difficult to cut one’s ties with our families. Therefore, neighbourhood proximity” – the top three localities in Malta for crime families are Valletta, Cospicua and Santa Lucia – “could also be a promoter of crime”.
The study underlines the outstanding need for a quality leap in efforts at rehabilitation within the CCF, combined with effective support services targeting convicts’ family members.
Successive governments have undertaken to tackle the need for better rehabilitation in prison. Still, more than one in two prisoners released from jail are likely to return behind bars. There is an endemic lack of rehabilitation of prisoners in preparation for their return to society. They are simply not being prepared for reintegration into society.
Regular reports continue to show that the so-called correctional facility is severely lacking in rehabilitation programmes. Prisoners there are regressing, rather than improving. As Dr Formosa Pace’s excellent study clearly demonstrates, this is detrimental to society with families sucked into a life of crime on a Dickensian scale.
She has exposed a deep-seated social problem that touches not only on an underclass in Malta, which our education and social services are failing to reach, but also known deficiencies in the CCF which should no longer be ignored. Only through a structured programme of resettlement and rehabilitation will prisoners be enabled to return to society and not to reoffend.