The Parliament of Catalonia has just decided to create a working group on the Catalan prison system that will have a human rights perspective. This is a very necessary and timely initiative. Catalonia has prisons and has prisoners, and the government of the Generalitat configures the public services system that this requires every day. It is already known: the health of a democracy can be measured by the level of respect it has for the rights of its prisoners. Nelson Mandela said a similar phrase.The panorama we face corresponds to a situation of complexity often ignored socially. We continue to have a rate of more than one hundred prisoners per hundred thousand inhabitants (more than 9,000 people); we have a very high length of stay in prison, of 19.3 months (at the forefront of Europe); we have a prison population with an alarming prevalence of mental health issues (close to 5% with serious mental disorders; more than 60% with personality disorders), and data on inmate suicides in constant increase for years.Taking this reality into account, we must look at prisons and ask ourselves if we are doing it right.Ten years ago, Parliament already created a study commission on the initiative of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture of the Council of Europe. According to an agreement of this committee, signed by Spain, the State is obliged to train prison staff in human rights matters, among many other actions. At that time, the initiative was understood in the face of a figure: in 2016, isolation measures were applied on more than two thousand occasions in Catalan prisons. It was necessary to know the causes of such a high use of a measure that, according to international standards, must be used restrictively.I then participated in a training activity for all prison staff. International regulations on human rights in prisons were explained, from the UN and the Council of Europe to the European Union. We have a good handful of norms and duties regarding necessary public actions. When I finished my session, I had to listen to a public employee – what’s more, head of services – who said that the training was a waste of time and a way to squander public money. A public employee belittling basic knowledge, knowledge without which it is not possible to do their job well. I became worried. Perhaps it was an attitude that allowed us to understand the abusive use of such a serious disciplinary measure.Years later, in the terrible spring of 2024, the trade union movement of prison public employees caused a situation of extreme gravity that put very basic public services of the prison system at risk. I still wonder (many of us wonder) how it is possible that the Public Prosecutor's Office did not act to investigate facts that could be constitutive of crimes against public order, by causing, for example, suspensions of trials. It was a shameful and unacceptable episode in the history of the Generalitat administration.

Every day, people who have already served their sentences are released from prison, and this is usually not news, unlike the release this Thursday of an inmate from the Ponent penitentiary center. He was already known in the 80s for his robberies and has spent half his life behind bars. He served a sentence for killing two people, including an agent while fleeing a robbery, and also for shooting an ex-policeman who died months later. After five months of freedom, he returned to prison for a robbery, and this week he regains his freedom. Now, the workers who have treated him in prison have warned that they see a risk of him reoffending, among other reasons because he has not wanted to follow any treatment program.

Carlota Elias was clear that she needed a topic that would motivate her for her final degree project in criminology. And she came across the word hyrbridophilia: people who are attracted to criminals. She has finally turned it into the book Hibristofília, a tale of (enclosed) fairies.

Two inmates from the special closed-regime department (Dert) —the isolation area— of Brians 2 prison attempted to escape from the center early Sunday morning. Penitentiary sources explained to el ARA that the two inmates spent between two and three hours in the attic duct of this department after leaving a cell by dismantling the light fixture, which gives access to the technical floor of the department, where the electrical and water system installation is located. The inmates were able to make this move without any alarm being triggered, the same sources add. For its part, the Department of Justice highlighted that the center's officials thwarted the escape attempt.

Montse says she's only ever doubted her job security once. It was two years ago today, when a colleague sent her a WhatsApp message alerting her that an inmate had stabbed Núria López in the kitchen of Mas de Enric prison and then committed suicide. "At that moment, you do think, 'Holy crap, where am I working?' I thought it could happen to me."

Benjamín Vega is 60 years old and has been in prison for the first time for 35 years. Since then, he has been in and out of prison. In 1991, a judge in Tarragona "punished him for a week" after he was caught stealing in Salou three times in a row in just a few days, and he admits he took it "like a game." "The worst thing about it all is that I didn't learn to be afraid in prison, because if I had been, I wouldn't have gone back," he says now, with twelve convictions that—if he doesn't get a sentence reduction, as he is currently trying—he will finish serving in 2039, when he will be 73 years old. While in prison, he has had two children: a son who is now 27 and a daughter who is 16, the daughter of a woman he met in the penitentiary. Mayo will be a grandfather for the first time, and it's been two years since he separated from his partner: "I could say I've been with a woman for thirty years, but what have we been through if I've only been on the streets for a year? We've only known each other from four visits, four times of an hour or an hour and a half." In prison, he explains that he met Vaquilla, "a great guy," with whom he says he shared his first experience in solitary confinement. He also ran into Dani Alves at the Brians 2 sports center, who, after much persistence, signed a pair of Real Madrid boots for his son.

Just as society has aged, so too has the number of elderly people behind bars, resulting in a rising average prison age. Only 1% of incarcerated individuals are over 70, but this figure is double what it was fifteen years ago. However, the total number of prisoners has decreased during this period. Among those facing this stage of life in prison are inmates serving very long sentences, as well as those with shorter terms or those who committed crimes later in life. Various risk factors converge in prison, accelerating aging, leading experts to believe that a person ages much earlier in prison than in freedom.

The Catalan Parliament has approved a long-standing demand of prison officers: to be recognized as law enforcement agents. The demand, which gained momentum after the murder of Núria, a cook at Mas de Enric prison in March 2024, by an inmate, was a proposal from the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) that passed with votes from the People's Party (PP), Vox, Catalan Alliance, and Together for Catalonia (Junts). In addition to prison officers, the status of law enforcement agent—already held by police officers, doctors, and teachers, among others—will also be extended to prison directors and rehabilitation staff: psychologists, educators, lawyers, and social workers. With Thursday's decision, Catalan prison officers become the first in Spain to achieve this status. Until a few months ago, the Catalan government had justified the measure by saying that only the Spanish government could approve it, but on the first anniversary of the crime in Mas de Enric, the Minister of Justice, Ramon Espadaler, He pledged to grant this prerogative using the powers that Catalonia has been delegated in matters of prisons.The proposal presented by the PSC, which was processed through the single reading procedure, initially limited itself to granting the status of law enforcement officers to prison guards. However, following an amendment by Junts, this status was extended to treatment officers as well. This occurred despite opposition from the Comuns, ERC, and CUP parties, who unsuccessfully attempted to block the proposal. Attempts by Vox and the PP to extend this status to other prison staff were also unsuccessful. Thus, the law approved this Thursday applies only to officers, both security and treatment, who work inside the prison, as confirmed by sources within the Department of Justice. However, prison sources criticize the law for not including among the new law enforcement officers those who work in the prison, such as cooks, sports instructors, or art workshop leaders, nor those employed by the Center for Initiatives for Reintegration (CIRE) who teach various trades to inmates.

It's common for readers to ask, in the comments on news articles about events in ARA, about the nationality or origin of the person arrested by the police. This is just one example that demonstrates how an issue has entered the public debate, often gaining traction in the political sphere thanks to certain political groups: the perceived link between newly arrived people and a greater propensity to commit crimes. The Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) do not release the nationality of those arrested, as origin is not considered a factor in criminal behavior, but the Catalan police have indicated they will begin providing more details for certain types of crimes starting next year. Currently, foreigners make up 18% of the residents of Catalonia and represent 52% of the prison population and more than half of all police arrests. However, both spokespeople for the Catalan police and experts consulted by this newspaper urge going beyond the raw data and contextualizing it by taking into account the truly decisive factors, such as socioeconomic ones.

This Thursday, the Department of Justice released for the first time data that provides a comprehensive overview of mechanical restraints used for disciplinary reasons in prisons. There were 313 such restraints in the first ten months of the year. These restraints are used eight times more frequently on inmates in closed or solitary confinement than on those who can leave prison on temporary release or are on semi-liberty, with a rate of 9.16 per 100 inmates in the former case and 1.21 in the latter. Proportionally, they also affect prisoners under 25 years of age more: among young people, the rate of restraints per 100 inmates is 3.74, while among adults it is 1.28. Some of the data presented this Thursday surprised even the Department of Justice, as admitted by the Minister, Ramon Espadaler, such as the figures broken down by gender. In the prison system, there are far fewer women than men (869 and 12,835, respectively), so in absolute numbers, the number of restraints applied to women (20) is also much lower than those applied to men (194). However, the proportion of restraints per 100 people is higher among women (2.3) than among men (1.51). Espadaler was scheduled to offer his response this Thursday in a parliamentary committee to the report by the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture, which warned of cases of mistreatment in Catalan prisons. The same report reiterated its request that the Catalan government abolish the use of mechanical restraints on prisoners for disciplinary reasons, limiting them to those applied for medical reasons. Espadaler and the Secretary of Penal Measures, Reintegration, and Victim Support, Elena Pérez, explained that the data confirms a downward trend in this practice. However, the Minister referred to his first statement before this same committee when he took office: "I could have come here and said 'zero restraint this term,' and I was honest in saying that it's not possible. What is possible is to work to reduce them as much as possible." From January to October of this year, 313 restraints were used in prisons for disciplinary reasons (a rate of 2.28 per 100 inmates). With this figure, the Catalan Ministry of Justice says it has achieved a 22.4% reduction in restraints compared to the previous year, consolidating a downward trend since 2023, the year with the highest number of restraints (643) in the last five years. "It's clear we have room for improvement, we must pursue it and we will," Espadaler responded to the opposition. For example, next week the Catalan Parliament will debate the proposal to grant prison officers the status of law enforcement agents, and this Thursday Pérez defended it as a way to reduce the use of restraints. "It could lead to a minimization of risky situations," he said. More factors involved

Although several factors often converge when officers decide to use restraint, Justice Department data indicates that in 66% of this year's incidents, the inmate was aggressive or showed serious resistance to staff. 42.5% of restraints were carried out after episodes of self-directed violence—including 5.75% suicide attempts—and 4.47% following fights between inmates. One of the main factors Justice Department will consider when designing prevention policies is repeat offenses. Of the 313 restraints used this year, almost half involved inmates who had been restrained more than once. In fact, a quarter of these inmates account for half of all restraints. To assess the impact of mental health issues on restraints, the department collected data on prisoners admitted to specialized medical units within 30 days of being restrained. Over a 10-month period, this occurred in approximately 30 cases, representing 14% of the total.

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The continued increase in the number of inmates in Catalonia has led the Catalan government to decide to expand prison spaces to prevent overcrowding. Specifically, it will build two new modules within the current perimeter of the Mas de Enric prison in El Catllar (Tarragonès), which will accommodate a total of 256 more prisoners. The new buildings will be for men and will be built on the site of a disused soccer field, as inmates already use the sports facilities in each module.

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Prison workers are accustomed to two classic methods in which inmates try to get hold of prohibited objects such as cell phones and drugs: having someone bring them in during a visit or bringing them in themselves upon returning from leave. But there is a third, more recent method, which involves having someone from outside deliver them using a drone. And, just this week, the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) arrested a man who had brought cell phones and drugs into Brians 1 prison using this method. This comes after workers at Brians 2, the adjacent prison, alerted them last week that they had detected a drone carrying drugs, cell phones, and other prohibited objects in prison.

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Christian LF, the leader of the xenophobic supremacist movementSport Them NowThe UE prisoner, imprisoned since July for instigating racist riots in the Murcia town of Torre Pacheco, had previously worked at the Can Llupià juvenile justice center in Barcelona. He worked there from November 2, 2022, to March 30, 2023, according to sources from the Department of Justice, who claim that he "never had access to the juvenile database." However, the Sicap Fepol union has demanded that the department conduct an internal investigation to confirm whether the man accessed this data.

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Cases of mistreatment in police custody, in Catalan prisons, and in juvenile detention centers. The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), a body of the Council of Europe, has reported several cases of "excessive use of force" by the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) and prison officers against detainees. It has also reported the use of force by staff in juvenile detention centers. Specifically, the delegation from the European body, which visited Catalonia between November 25 and December 5, 2024, claims to have "corroborated" through medical certificates mistreatment such as "slapping," "punching," and "hitting" by authorities. The CPT did so in a report released this Thursday, which, however, explains that the majority of prisoners interviewed stated they received "correct" treatment.

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In one week, two female workers at Brians 2 prison have reported having suffered sexual harassment by two inmates. As reported by the CSIF union, the incidents occurred on July 14 and 19 at the same Sant Esteve Sesrovires penitentiary.

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Moscow's Lubyanka building has gone down in history as an emblem of Stalinist terror: the KGB's spies' headquarters in Moscow and the prison where dissidents were interrogated and tortured before being sent to Siberian labor camps. The headquarters was closed in the 1960s, but it wasn't until 2006, 15 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, that the secret services relinquished control of the last pretrial detention centers. Now, however, a new law will allow the FSB, the KGB's successor, to recover its prison network, and human rights organizations have already raised the alarm.

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The Generalitat has recognized for the first time responsibilities regarding The murder of cook Núria López in Mas de Enric prison 15 months ago and has agreed to compensate the victim's family with 40,446 euros. Specifically, the Department of Justice admits that "the public prison service did not operate with the quality standards that would be required," to the point that there were "malfunctions." While this "defective" operation was not "the direct cause of the events," it accepts the "causal relationship" between the events and the assault, because "if they had not occurred, they could have led to the adoption of different measures" for the inmate, who kept his job in the kitchen despite having committed a very serious offense.

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Some objects and substances are prohibited in prison, but this doesn't mean they're not allowed in. Prison officials make hundreds of seizures each year when they discover, for example, an inmate with a cell phone, drugs, or some type of weapon. Over the past seven years, drug seizures have increased by 76%, according to data obtained by ARA through a transparency request, which the Department of Justice has declined to comment on. Seizures of dangerous objects have also nearly doubled.

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The Catalan Data Protection Authority (APDCAT) has fined Clece Seguridad €96,004 for failing to take sufficient measures to protect critical information about the prison system that it processes on behalf of the Department of Justice. Specifically, this company provides remote monitoring, tracking, and surveillance services for prisoners on probation who wear a telematic bracelet that geolocates them. Documents regarding the installation of these bracelets were stolen from the company in August 2022, when the papers spent an entire night in a van in a sand parking lot. The company reported the theft the next day but did not alert the department of the information theft.

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The few centimeters that a tube of anti-inflammatory ointment measures are enough to hide, protected by plastic wrap, one of the most precious objects inside a prison: a cell phone. It's small, has no internet access, and would cost a few euros in a street shop, but here it allows you to make calls and send messages from a place where communication is scarce. Prison workers use all kinds of tricks to smuggle in and hide anything prohibited. Drugs are also found, often inside the body, but they are also frequently hidden in the soles of shoes or between the seams of clothing. "There are authentic works of art sewn by hand and machine," says one of the officials interviewed.

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