ADPD has called for a public inquiry into the operational aspects of the prison after the latest death of a prisoner.

A young woman died last week after having been hospitalised in mid-June when she tried to commit suicide.

ADPD deputy general secretary Melissa Bagley told a press conference on Saturday that prison should also be a place where human dignity is respected.

“It is unacceptable for prison management to be based on threats and on instilling fear. Instead of rehabilitation, prison is the cause of mental and emotional illness. No one should be subject to inhuman and degrading treatment, not even in prison. Prison should be a place which helps the rehabilitation of prisoners.”

ADPD chairperson Carmel Cacopardo said a recent proposal to do away with solitary confinement as punishment in prison made sense in view of research results that identified the psychological damage which such punishment caused.  

He said prison management should be in the hands of people who are trained in the rehabilitation of inmates and the military and police should have no role.

Cacopardo added that the minister for home affairs should desist from propping up the current director, Alex Dalli.

"The minister, has through lack of action, become an accomplice in the developing prison crisis. He is politically responsible for the repeated deaths and attempted suicides," he said. 

The party officials observed that the prison population in Malta increased by 15% between 2019 and 2020. This fact together with the statistic that a quarter of the prison population is there on drug-related cases indicated the importance of a quick shift of drug rehabilitation programmes away from the failed criminal justice model towards a decriminalised socio-medical model as practiced in Portugal.

The suicide rate in Malta's prisons was also alarmingly high when compared to that in other prisons, they said. 

"Prison needs social care workers, specialised educators and other professionally trained personnel. Instead, it has been unfortunately been transformed into a military camp.