It has been reported that, for the past few years, the Corradino Correctional Facility, has had to make use of the old divisional accommodation because the rest was full. Cells in the old divisions of this Victorian prison were not designed to have flushing toilets. It appears that moving inmates around to carry out the work upgrades may prove to be difficult because most of the cells are already occupied.

The Minister for Home Affairs and National Security, Michael Farrugia, has broadly acknowledged that the lack of flushing toilets had long been an issue, adding that, apart from the toilets, there were other logistical and structural problems. He noted that the prison population caused infrastructural complications that made installing flushing toilets difficult. Furthermore, he pointed out, there is also an issue with finding a place to house the inmates when works are under way. The government, the minister pledged, was committed to addressing the problem and it was evaluating all options. Such reports raise some disturbing issues.

The Corradino Correctional Facility was built in 1842, making it 175 years old. Successive Maltese governments have been responsible for the state of the prison for at least the last 53 years. It is difficult to explain that in that time no administration has had either the wit or the financial resources to make the necessary improvements to something as fundamentally necessary to civilised hygienic living as flushing toilets in cells.

Successive internal and international reports have drawn attention to the overcrowded and ‘Victorian’ (in the most pejorative sense of that word to mean antiquated and backward) conditions of the prison. Living conditions there were decried only last year when the Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of the Council of Europe described the situation in the facility as “generally poor”. So has the European Court of Human Rights.

The fact alone that the prison is overcrowded should set alarm bells ringing among the authorities. Quite apart from the security implications, the hygienic and health consequences of totally inadequate toilet facilities – and, presumably, a regime of buckets that have to be slopped out each morning – raise the risk of an epidemic or disease, which is unacceptable.

What is to be done? First, the government must provide an additional injection of financial resources to deal urgently with the long-standing problems of the poor infrastructure. In addition to the report about lack of flushing toilets, it is well known that there is a major drug problem in the prison, indicating that security is lax and major physical and technological investments need to be made to effect improvements in this area. Lack of adequate infrastructure funding has led to today’s dangerous health and security situation. This must be rectified.

Secondly, it cannot be beyond the combined organisational planning ability of the Ministry for Home Affairs and the prison authorities to arrange a phased managed programme of decanting of prisoners from one part of the facility to another while an urgent programme of installing flushing toilets is introduced. If necessary, low-security risk prisoners should be temporarily rehoused in secure conditions in military barracks for the duration.

It is up to the Minister of Home Affairs to exercise the political will to get this done.