He was in charge of the prison’s school and although he never saw drugs, the lasting impression Desmond Zammit Marmara has is that the Corradino Correctional Facility is “infested” with them.

“Many inmates, and not necessarily hardened criminals, who were not drug users complained about the problem, which they described as very common,” Mr Zammit Marmara said when contacted about claims made by a former inmate that the prison is teeming with drugs.

Mr Zammit Marmara was coordinator of the prison school for 12 years until 2009 and admitted that drugs also hindered the educational work he performed.

“Fighting sometimes broke out between inmates during class and some used to register for educational programmes to get in touch with particular inmates from other divisions with the reason almost always being drugs.”

Mr Zammit Marmara’s impression seems to strengthen the description of a prison full of drugs given by former inmate Charles Muscat known as Il-Pips, who told The Sunday Times last month that he started taking heroin in prison after being placed in a division where all inmates were heroin addicts.

Prison director Abraham Zammit played down the extent of the drug problem in an interview with this newspaper.

“It is far removed from reality when somebody says the facility is full of drugs but we are not infallible,” he said last month, admitting that it was next to impossible to have a prison that was completely drug-free.

Mr Zammit also laid the blame on the creative ways devised by inmate relatives to smuggle in drugs.

The prison director’s reaction was very similar to that of his predecessor, who faced similar claims about widespread use of drugs in prison in 2006.

But while Mr Zammit Marmara acknowledged the inventive methods employed to smuggle in and hide drugs, he said it was always in the authorities’ interest to play down the problem. “There are some very serious creative professionals there but I believe the authorities could have done more to control the problem.”

His feeling is shared by George Busuttil, the head of prisoner welfare organisation Mid-Dlam għad-Dawl.

Mr Busuttil said that in 16 years of visiting the place he never saw drugs but by simply observing the behaviour of some inmates it was obvious that there was a drug problem among the prison population.

Even if he never witnessed any drug taking, Mr Busuttil came across drug-related problems such as usury.

“We had family members asking for help because people would have turned up at their home asking for big sums of money owed by their relatives in prison,” he said.

Mr Busuttil does not buy the argument often made by prison officials that the major drug smuggling route in prison is through relatives.

“There are only two ways by which drugs can enter prison: either through the visitors’ area or through delivery vans. Both are supposedly controlled well and I do not believe that the biggest drug smuggling problem is with family members because visits are closely monitored.”

Only last week warders found suspicious seedlings being grown in one of the cells. Tests still have to confirm whether the plants were cannabis but the incident has raised eyebrows.

It will most certainly not be the last incident but Mr Busuttil feels the correctional facility is also under-funded and this can hinder warders.

He said that some years ago drug sniffer dogs were used to help warders during searches but these were removed. The reason why is unclear.

But it is the prevalent attitude displayed by the authorities that is possibly more worrying for Mr Busuttil. “I cannot say the authorities close an eye to the drug problem because they do try to carry out their job but I feel they are somehow resigned to the fact that drugs are present in prison.”