Corradino Correctional Facility is the Cinderella of the public service. It has been left by successive government administrations to bump along the bottom. Home affairs ministers have occasionally taken an initiative to make an improvement in, say, parole, educational or rehabilitation facilities but, on the whole, they have been content to keep their heads down and pray that their political careers are not brought down prematurely by some major catastrophe or scandal in prison.
The public only becomes aware of conditions at the CCF sporadically. In the last few weeks, we had a small insight into some of the issues in the wake of the death of a number of prisoners.
The Nationalist Opposition has called for an independent inquiry after a 51-year-old inmate passed away at the CCF, the fifth death while in custody in under four months. Three of the casualties were suicides and another was due to a flu virus in prison. Three other inmates were taken to hospital suffering from flu symptoms and several others needed attention in prison.
This led to the Malta Police Association to order its members not to escort prisoners showing flu symptoms unless they were offered protective clothing, a directive that was subsequently withdrawn.
The suicide watch regime may or may not eventually be found wanting, however, there is nothing to indicate that the medical response to the flu outbreak was incorrect.
Still, these worrying reports, coming in quick succession on top of what the public suspects is the reality of what is happening at the CCF, say a lot about the febrile prison atmosphere generally and the extremely poor conditions under which both prisoners and disciplined staff operate.
Every report that has come out about the prevailing situation at the CCF - of which those from the prisoner non-governmental organisation, Mid-Dlam Għad-Dawl, and another, about six years ago, under a working group led by a former prison director have probably been the most powerful - paint a depressing picture of institutionalised inefficiency.
The picture that emerges from the reports and the hearsay accounts from those who have seen what goes on at the CCF is one of a 170-year-old Victorian prison which is shabby, overcrowded and poorly maintained. The powers that be will probably insist that is far removed from reality but it will take more than just a denial or a few photographs of selected areas behind the prison walls to make many people change their mind.
Some of the older divisions, where inmates are still housed, lack proper toilets, with drainage and ablution systems that cannot cope. Is it any wonder that, in such conditions, holding about 600 prisoners, the risk of a flu epidemic or some other infectious disease is always prevalent?
Information about the true conditions at CCF tend to be sparse, as though successive governments have something to hide. Rightly or wrongly, the impression one is left with – a picture which the recent spate of incidents have tended to reinforce – is of a dysfunctional organisation, whose leadership is weak, where morale is low and investment in manpower, security and health and safety are deficient.
If the Minister for Home Affairs wants to prove that impression is incorrect, it should start by putting all cards on the table. Six years after the last comprehensive investigation into the CCF, the government should consider instituting a wide-ranging commission of inquiry to take stock of the state of the prison, make recommendations and make sure they are implemented in the shortest time possible.