Last Tuesday, a handful of family and well-wishers gathered outside a back door at the Corradino prison.

The occasion was the temporary (I hope not) release of Christopher Bartolo following a recommendation by the government to the President. There was much elation as he walked out, carrying a rucksack and a small box – presumably his personal possessions in prison.

Bartolo is a 37-year-old who is serving a five-year prison term for drug trafficking. He is also a renal patient whose health had got worse in prison – as expected, given the conditions and lack of medical facilities. The government did the decent thing and he is now under house arrest with full access to treatment. Hopefully, his health will improve.

The next day, it was Dorianne Camilleri’s turn. The 36-year-old teacher had been convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to five years in prison. On Wednesday, this was changed to a six-month suspended sentence and a fine.

Clearly, the two cases are entirely separate; they involve different people, offences and circumstances. Still, there are parallels which I think raise certain questions about the reasoning behind and the value of imprisonment as a form of punishment.

Both Bartolo and Camilleri are young people who have much to live for. Neither is remotely likely to be a menace to society now that they’re out of prison. In both cases, the general opinion about their release – bar that of a few bloody-minded individuals who in an earlier age would have booked front-row seats at the gallows – was that justice had been served, and that there was no point in inflicting five years of cruelty on basically decent young people.

Trouble is, what happened last week was the exception. The rule is for people to be locked up and forgotten about for a long time. Bartolo himself may well have to go back to prison in the event that he gets a new kidney. And who now remembers William Agius, the 32-year-old who was sent to prison for three years over a 2004 offence? His case was all over the news just two months ago; he now wastes his life away in a cell.

Prison is a highly strange set of prescriptions that systematically deskill and de-socialise inmates even as they physically break their bodies

It’s funny, really. While many of us were happy to see Bartolo and Camilleri walk free and get on with their lives, there is a general reluctance to extend that happiness. Generally, we prefer prisoners to stay in prison, ideally for as long as possible.

In bad conditions, too. In prison, basic things like the minimum wage do not apply. Prisoners are expected to slave away for some private business or other and get paid practically nothing for their work. They can of course choose not to do so, in which case they die of boredom.

Health, too, is a fuzzy notion in prison. Take nutrition. Even as the general obsession with healthy eating reaches pathological levels (I’m told that school Gestapos routinely confiscate any sweets that pupils smuggle in), prisoners are fed packaged excuses for meals. The result is that the health of most prisoners deteriorates as the years go by.

The hardest hit are those who suffer from medical conditions. In prison, it is not just kidney failure that is a problem; the simplest allergy can become a nightmare.

Besides, prison imposes the most counter-productive and bizarre regimes on inmates. Internet use, for example, is severely restricted, as is communication with the outside world generally. For the rest of us, it has become a truism that the internet is an essential part of social life. No such logic obtains at Corradino, where inmates are expected to somehow transmute social isolation into social rehabilitation.

Prison, then, is a highly strange set of prescriptions that systematically deskill and de-socialise inmates even as they physically break their bodies. Surely the argument that it ought to be reserved for the most dangerous of offenders is not too far-fetched.

Neither Christopher Bartolo nor Dorianne Camilleri are that. They should never have gone anywhere near prison, let alone in it. As it happened, they were lucky, and most of us are thankful for that.

The hundreds of inmates who would not be a danger to society, but who are condemned to waste years of their lives, are a different matter entirely. There are men and women in Corradino who will leave prison in 20, 30 years’ time. In the case of drug mules and such, their crimes were not much worse than Bartolo’s.

They may yet be extended understanding and compassion, but only if their kidneys stop working.

mafalzon@hotmail.com