“Don’t take the easy way. Take the small path and stay out of trouble.”
“If violence and crime are to be curbed, we are the only people who can do it. The inmate does not fear the police, the judge or jury. Therefore, it is our job to teach fear. Welcome to prison!”
Two notices displayed in two prisons, 2,700 kilometres apart as the crow flies. Two completely different approaches and philosophies.
The first, a message of encouragement, could be seen written on a wall in Halden prison, Norway, considered by many to be a model rehabilitation facility.
The second was displayed for some time at Corradino Correctional Facility, signed by Alexander Dalli, the director general, and dated June 15, 2018.
It could easily be mistaken for a note written by Inspector Javert to Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, which Victor Hugo wrote in 1862.
At Haiden, the overriding philosophy is that if inmates are treated like animals, it will be animals that would be released back into society after they have served their time.
Evidently, the former military officer who now runs the prison at Corradino thinks otherwise.
Discipline remains imperative in a prison, irrespective of whether a retribution or rehabilitation approach is adopted.
Parents, too, exercise discipline with their children but they do not need a “punishment chair” to do so.
The Corradino Correctional Facility needs to be run in a disciplined but humane manner. Its real challenge should not be how to lock criminals up and throw away the key but, rather, how to produce inmates who are able to contribute to society once released.
The Mandela Rules on the treatment of prisoners make a powerful point when they say: “The prison regime should seek to minimise any differences between prison life and life at liberty that tend to lessen the responsibility of the prisoners or the respect due to their dignity as human beings.”
Corradino prison needs urgent attention, not least because of the overcrowding. The Nationalist Party has made a timely attempt at addressing the prison and personal liberty system in the first of a series of proposals to be drawn up by working groups tackling a range of national issues.
Such initiatives should not only serve to focus attention on given topics but, more importantly, provoke a national debate and, hopefully, lead to action, whoever may be in government.
Surely a way could be found to have elements from the two political parties come together in informal settings to discuss such proposals and then, ideally, take a common stand with the help of experts and other interested persons who can make a contribution.
The PN’s so-called security cluster launched nine initiatives that cover, among other matters, a reduction in the prison population, more humane conditions for inmates, a better working environment for warders and staff, an extension of the prison facility, and half-way houses and supervised accommodation for inmates approaching the end of their term.
Its suggestions, the party says, should help former inmates achieve better integration into society.
While justice demands that an inmate serve a sentence as handed down by the court, part of the idea of restorative justice is that an inmate becomes a better person in the process. A secure building could guarantee the first but only a true rehabilitation effort can start to achieve the second.
This is a challenge facing not just a government-in-waiting, which has made a good start to tackling it, but one that the current administration needs to get to grips with rather urgently.
It would be so much more effective if the two political parties tackled a national, non-partisan issue like this in a bipartisan manner.