A "punitive culture" pervades among correctional officers at Corradino prison, a former legal officer of the state jail has said. 

This culture, lawyer George Camilleri said, often clashes with the rehabilitative attitude of professionals working with prisoners at the facility. 

Camilleri, who recently resigned from his prisons' role and spent five years working for the Office of the Attorney General before that, was being interviewed by Andrew Azzopardi on 103FM.

Legal officer hamstrung

Camilleri told the Dean of the Faculty for Social Wellbeing that with hindsight, the title of 'principal legal officer' was a "misnomer". 

Despite his role, he could not, under any circumstance give orders to warders, members of the correctional class or the records office, he claimed. 

“While I would give guidance - and have it in writing as proof that I was doing my job - the advice wouldn’t be followed. 

“I raised the issue with the CEO and the executive consultant, asking them: how can I take care of the prison’s interests when I don’t have the facility to guide the records office on how to proceed?” he recalled.

Ironically, he said, he was nowadays assisting a man who was imprisoned without a ticket of admission. 

According to subsidiary legislation 260.03, no person can be confined in prison without a valid "committal document signed by an authorised officer of the court or other competent authority giving the sentence or order for such person to be so confined, or, in the case of a person arrested for an offence, by a police officer not below the rank of inspector". 

Punitive vs rehabilitative cultures

Fielding questions from Azzopardi, the lawyer said that the infrastructure of the prisons was improving since Alex Dalli's time.

Dalli suspended himself as director of prisons in November 2021, following a series of deaths by suicide at the prisons. He was replaced a month later. 

His replacement, Robert Brincau, stepped down last January after a court found him guilty of a range of offences including injuring a man and carrying a gun without a licence at Għadira Bay in August. 

Christopher Siegersma - the prison's first welfare commissioner - then took over from Brincau, becoming one of the youngest high-ranking prison officials in history at age 39.

Lawyer Camilleri on Saturday told the radio programme host Azzopardi that under Siegersma, rehabilitation continued to be a challenge. 

During his time as principal legal officer at CCF, he noticed a sense of goodwill within the care and reintegration unit despite a continuous fight for human resources such as psychologists and care plan workers.

However, "there is a sense of helplessness at attempting to address the negative aspects of the system, such as a culture from the corrective class,” he said.

“The corrective class focuses a lot on the punitive aspect, and therefore, retribution. Meanwhile, the professional class pushes for rehabilitation. Those two cultures, more often than not, clash,” he elaborated.

Treatment order cut short

Attempting to illustrate his comments, Camilleri spoke of a current client of his who was sentenced over aggravated theft.

According to his social inquiry report, the man had been through a lot, and Camilleri believes that from birth, he never stood a chance.

"Born to an alcoholic mother, he moved from one children's home to another, until he ended up homeless and led a vagabond life. He then met a group of people who mugged pedestrians.

But with the help of someone outside of prison, he had managed to turn his life around and was enrolled with RISe [a community-based offender rehabilitation and reintegration service], Camilleri said. 

Despite that improvement, the man - a foreign national who has lived in Malta from at least the age of 14, speaks Maltese and has Maltese friends - has now been issued with a removal procedure to have him deported. 

As a result, the man has had a three-year treatment order issued by the court cut short. Camilleri said he has also heard, unofficially, that the man was imprisoned for fear of absconding. 

"It is not true that the voice of prisoners is being heard. I have not yet been given an official explanation concerning his treatment, and have argued: why would a person fighting for his right to stay here abscond?"

Torture in prison?

Camilleri was also asked to comment on claims of torture within the prison.

He said that under Brincau's and Siegersma's management, there had been no torture committed with their knowledge.

On the other hand, during Dalli's time, he had heard the same version of torture from different people, however, he had no proof. 

The lawyer also noted that while he had trust in Brincau's management, he did not have trust in Siegersma's ways. Among others, he said, the current director did not reply to the lawyer's emails and avoided speaking with prisoners themselves. 

“The thing that bothered me the most while I was there was that my superior instructed me to not speak to the prisoners. How can a lawyer not speak to prisoners? As a principal legal officer, I am obliged to listen to prisoners’ qualms before they take the issue to the commissioner. I think I was seen as too proactive.”

Camilleri also claimed that a correctional officer had called him pufta [derogatory homophobic insult] and despite his report over the matter, management did not take action about the incident. 

It was not clear whether the incident happened during Dalli's, Brincau's or Siegersma's management.