AS FAR as jails went, the Nicosia Central Prisons used to have quite an enviable reputation. It used to be the case that foreign prisoners, given the choice to serve their terms in their home country would opt to stay in Cyprus because the conditions were so much better here. Not any more.
The central prisons are now overcrowded to the point where conditions are becoming a health hazard, while the prospects for rehabilitation – especially of young first-time offenders – plummet with the brutalising conditions and contact with hardened criminals.
It’s become a cliché to say so, but, of course, Cyprus is not the place it used to be. Crime has soared, fuelled in recent months by a spiralling heroin problem. Inevitably, more people are being put behind bars. Indeed, even more people could end up in prison if police sustain their recent zeal against the sex trade, and in particular the pimps and cabaret owners whose traffic of women has brought so much shame onto our country.
But the prison system could just about cope with all that. What it cannot cope with is the flood of illegal immigrants kept in jail. About half of the prison’s current population of 500 are foreigners, and 80 per cent of those are illegal immigrants, who should not be in prison in the first place. Europe has told us time and time again that immigration offences are administrative infractions that should not be punishable by jail terms.
Quite apart from anything else, how can it be in the interest of our society to pay taxpayers’ money to maintain illegal immigrants in prison, and then deport them? Prison serves three purposes: to punish, to protect society and to prepare the offender for rehabilitation into society. Only the first is served in the case of illegal immigrants who end up being deported, and we’re a pretty sick society if we consider it so important to punish people looking for a better life before deporting them back to the misery they were trying to escape.
There are other problems too. The Attorney-general quite rightly clamped down on a system of presidential pardons that was far too lenient and open to political abuse. But he has gone the other way, allowing very few criteria for early release of inmates, while pursuing a prosecutions policy that is putting more and more people behind bars.
Improvements are on the way. New cell blocks are being built, as are medical facilities for treating drug addicts. These are all positive developments that in the medium term will help to alleviate the situation. But the fundamental issue remains: are we putting the right people behind bars? Should illegal immigrants be in jail? Should drug users be in jail? Should petty offenders and debtors be in jail? And for those who are in prison, should there not be the prospect of early release as an incentive for good behaviour and character reform?
We need to ask ourselves what our penal system is for, to look at alternatives and ways to improve the system. For if the system is purely punitive, society will in the long run pay the price, with increasing reoffending rates by prisoners who emerge not reformed but further brutalised by their passage through the prison system.
